2026’s largest US tech IPO has Abu Dhabi's AI thesis riding on it

The largest US tech IPO of 2026 — a UAE-backed AI chipmaker — will price an already overflowing book this week. Cerebras’ offering of 28 mn shares is already 20x covered, with the California-based business expected to raise its price range by USD 10 per share to USD 125-135 as early as today, Bloomberg reports, citing people it says are in the know. The top of the range would imply a market cap of roughly USD 28.7 bn at listing (up from USD 23 bn in February) and IPO proceeds of about USD 3.8 bn (up from USD 3.5 bn originally), by our math.

This looks a lot like the moment that US capital markets first put a number on Abu Dhabi’s AI thesis. UAE entities make up 86% of Cerebras’s revenue. Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI, the research anchor of the UAE’s entire AI strategy, accounted for 62% of the firm’s 2025 top line, and Abu Dhabi-backed AI firm G42 accounted for 24%, according to the prospectus for the offering. G42 alone drove 85% of Cerebras’ revenue the year before.

What’s a little xenophobia among friends? Cerebras first filed to go public in 2024, but the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US opened a formal investigation into G42’s minority position, citing concerns that G42’s ties to Chinese tech companies could undermine US export controls and give Beijing access to advanced AI chips. The move was ultimately cleared after Cerebras restructured G42’s equity stake into non-voting shares with no board influence. UAE national security advisor Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan did a lot of diplomatic heavy lifting to get that to work out.

The semiconductor firm is also deploying AI infrastructure inside the UAE’s Stargateproject — the cluster being built alongside Nvidia, OpenAI, and Oracle, which is set to be operational this year with an initial 200 MW capacity, ITP reports, making the case for Cerebras as the compute backbone of a sovereign AI strategy.

The pitch? Cerebras wants to be seen as a credible Nvidia alternative with wafer-scale chips, backed by OpenAI compute demand and AWS. Whether the market is right to price in a smooth transition to a more global revenue mix — implied by the OpenAI and AWS agreements, but not yet visible in the financials — is the open question underneath the 20x book.

ADVISORS- Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays, and UBS are quarterbacking the transaction.