The IPO of Cerebras Systems on the stock exchange concluded with great success, generating billions of dollars for the company's founders and major investors. Benchmark, a venture capital firm holding a 9.5% stake in the company, was one of the biggest beneficiaries of this success. This is reported by Techcrunch.com reports .
Benchmark partner Eric Vishria has been a member of the Cerebras board of directors since 2016. However, in an interview with TechCrunch, he admitted that the partnership almost never happened. At the time, Vishria was skeptical about investing in hardware and was annoyed with his assistant for scheduling the meeting.
However, during the third slide of the presentation, when Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman explained that GPUs were not well-suited for artificial intelligence, Vishria's perspective changed completely. The idea amazed him, especially since AI had not yet achieved breakthroughs like ChatGPT at that time.
Cerebras proposed an entirely new type of massive chip designed for training artificial intelligence. When Vishria discussed the idea with his Benchmark partners, they noted their lack of experience in hardware. Consequently, they had to involve one of the Benchmark founders, who had experience dating back to the 1990s, to close the deal.
Read “Zamin” on Telegram!
