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Benchmark raises 5M in special funds to double down on Cerebras | TechCrunch

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

This week, AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems announced that it raised $1 billion in fresh capital at a valuation of $23 billion — a nearly threefold increase from the $8.1 billion valuation the Nvidia rival had reached just six months earlier.

While the round was led by Tiger Global, a huge part of the new capital came from one of the company’s earliest backers: Benchmark Capital. The prominent Silicon Valley firm invested at least $225 million in Cerebras’ latest round, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Benchmark first bet on 10-year-old Cerebras when it led the startup’s $27 million Series A in 2016. Since Benchmark deliberately keeps its funds under $450 million, the firm raised two separate vehicles, both called ‘Benchmark Infrastructure,’ according to regulatory filings. According to the person familiar with the deal, these vehicles were created specifically to fund the Cerebras investment.

Benchmark declined to comment.

What sets Cerebras apart is the sheer physical scale of its processors. The company’s Wafer Scale Engine, its flagship chip announced in 2024, measures approximately 8.5 inches on each side and packs 4 trillion transistors into a single piece of silicon. To put that in perspective, the chip is manufactured from nearly an entire 300-millimeter silicon wafer, the circular discs that serve as the foundation for all semiconductor production. Traditional chips are thumbnail-sized fragments cut from these wafers; Cerebras instead uses almost the whole circle.

This architecture delivers 900,000 specialized cores working in parallel, allowing the system to process AI calculations without shuffling data between multiple separate chips (a major bottleneck in conventional GPU clusters). The company says the design enables AI inference tasks to run more than 20 times faster than competing systems.

The funding comes as Cerebras, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., gains momentum in the AI infrastructure race. Last month, Cerebras signed a multi-year agreement worth more than $10 billion to provide 750 megawatts of computing power to OpenAI. The partnership, which extends through 2028, aims to help OpenAI deliver faster response times for complex AI queries. (OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also an investor in Cerebras.)

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Cerebras claims its systems, built with its proprietary chips designed for AI use, are faster than Nvidia’s chips.

The company’s path to going public has been complicated by its relationship with G42, a UAE-based AI firm that accounted for 87% of Cerebras’ revenue as of the first half of 2024. G42’s historical ties to Chinese technology companies triggered a national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, bumping back Cerebras’ initial IPO plans and even prompting the outfit to withdraw an earlier filing in early 2025. By late last year, G42 had been removed from Cerebras’ investor list, clearing the way for a fresh IPO attempt.

Cerebras is now preparing for a public debut in the second quarter of 2026, according to Reuters.

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Samsung’s flagship Galaxy Book 6 Ultra laptop has the premium build, processor and graphics muscle required by creative pros. Can it replace a MacBook Pro?

#Samsung #Galaxy #Book #Ultra #MacBook #Pro">Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra vs MacBook ProSamsung’s flagship Galaxy Book 6 Ultra laptop has the premium build, processor and graphics muscle required by creative pros. Can it replace a MacBook Pro?#Samsung #Galaxy #Book #Ultra #MacBook #Pro

Samsung’s flagship Galaxy Book 6 Ultra laptop has the premium build, processor and graphics muscle required by creative pros. Can it replace a MacBook Pro?

#Samsung #Galaxy #Book #Ultra #MacBook #Pro">Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra vs MacBook ProSamsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra vs MacBook ProSamsung’s flagship Galaxy Book 6 Ultra laptop has the premium build, processor and graphics muscle required by creative pros. Can it replace a MacBook Pro?#Samsung #Galaxy #Book #Ultra #MacBook #Pro

Samsung’s flagship Galaxy Book 6 Ultra laptop has the premium build, processor and graphics muscle required by creative pros. Can it replace a MacBook Pro?

#Samsung #Galaxy #Book #Ultra #MacBook #Pro

Microsoft says it built the new Run menu using code from Command Palette, a utility available through PowerToys that allows you to quickly run commands, open websites, search files, and more. Windows 11 Insiders can enable the new Run menu by going to Settings > System > Advanced and turning the option on. An early version of the redesigned Run menu started appearing in preview builds last year.

“We’ve collaborated tightly with partners across the platform to get these UI surfaces loading snappy,” Microsoft’s blog post says. “Improvements we’ve made to the platform don’t just make Run fast, but they help make the whole OS more efficient.”

#Microsoft #tests #redesigned #Windows #Run #menu #dark #modeMicrosoft,News,Tech,Windows">Microsoft tests redesigned Windows 11 Run menu with dark mode and moreIn a blog post explaining the changes, Microsoft says it decided to drop the Run menu’s “Browse” button — a shortcut to user files — after finding “very low usage.” Instead, Microsoft added support for a new “~\” command, which leads to your user directory.Microsoft says it built the new Run menu using code from Command Palette, a utility available through PowerToys that allows you to quickly run commands, open websites, search files, and more. Windows 11 Insiders can enable the new Run menu by going to Settings > System > Advanced and turning the option on. An early version of the redesigned Run menu started appearing in preview builds last year.“We’ve collaborated tightly with partners across the platform to get these UI surfaces loading snappy,” Microsoft’s blog post says. “Improvements we’ve made to the platform don’t just make Run fast, but they help make the whole OS more efficient.”#Microsoft #tests #redesigned #Windows #Run #menu #dark #modeMicrosoft,News,Tech,Windows

from Command Palette, a utility available through PowerToys that allows you to quickly run commands, open websites, search files, and more. Windows 11 Insiders can enable the new Run menu by going to Settings > System > Advanced and turning the option on. An early version of the redesigned Run menu started appearing in preview builds last year.

“We’ve collaborated tightly with partners across the platform to get these UI surfaces loading snappy,” Microsoft’s blog post says. “Improvements we’ve made to the platform don’t just make Run fast, but they help make the whole OS more efficient.”

#Microsoft #tests #redesigned #Windows #Run #menu #dark #modeMicrosoft,News,Tech,Windows">Microsoft tests redesigned Windows 11 Run menu with dark mode and more

In a blog post explaining the changes, Microsoft says it decided to drop the Run menu’s “Browse” button — a shortcut to user files — after finding “very low usage.” Instead, Microsoft added support for a new “~\” command, which leads to your user directory.

Microsoft says it built the new Run menu using code from Command Palette, a utility available through PowerToys that allows you to quickly run commands, open websites, search files, and more. Windows 11 Insiders can enable the new Run menu by going to Settings > System > Advanced and turning the option on. An early version of the redesigned Run menu started appearing in preview builds last year.

“We’ve collaborated tightly with partners across the platform to get these UI surfaces loading snappy,” Microsoft’s blog post says. “Improvements we’ve made to the platform don’t just make Run fast, but they help make the whole OS more efficient.”

#Microsoft #tests #redesigned #Windows #Run #menu #dark #modeMicrosoft,News,Tech,Windows

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