Benchmark raises $225M in special funds to double down on Cerebras

Cerebras Systems, an AI chipmaker known for its uniquely large Wafer Scale Engine chip, recently raised $1 billion in new funding at a valuation nearly three times higher than six months prior. A significant portion of this round—at least $225 million—came from Benchmark Capital, one of Cerebras’ earliest investors. Benchmark created two special funds, named ‘Benchmark Infrastructure,’ specifically to support this investment, reflecting strong confidence in Cerebras’ technology and growth potential. The company’s flagship chip, measuring about 8.5 inches per side and containing 4 trillion transistors, is nearly the size of an entire silicon wafer, enabling 900,000 specialized cores to work in parallel. This design allows AI inference tasks to run over 20 times faster than traditional GPU-based systems by eliminating data transfer bottlenecks. Cerebras is gaining traction in the AI infrastructure market, highlighted by a recent multi-year deal with OpenAI to provide 750 megawatts of computing power through