Cerebras is on track to pull off the biggest tech IPO of the year so far. Among all listings, it’s only second to the combined debut last month of Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Inc. and Pershing Square USA Ltd.

The AI chipmaker on Monday said it plans to list its shares for $150 to $160 each, a jump it made based on high demand from its previous pricing of $115 to $125 a share. Altogether, its 30 million shares could bring in up to $4.8 billion, putting its market cap at a high end of more than $34 billion. Cerebras boosted the price after orders poured in for more than 20 times the number of available shares, Bloomberg reported.

Chips from Cerebras could make hyperscalers less reliant on the market leader Nvidia as companies figure out how to make running AI more cost-efficient.

Divvying Up Nvidia’s Work

Cerebras is known for chips that handle inference workloads, meaning they help AI answer users’ queries. Its chips help run AI after it has already been trained, which gives them an edge at a time when companies have switched their focus from building AI to efficiently keeping it humming along.

Cerebras caters to companies that are trying to reduce their reliance on pricey GPUs from Nvidia, which dominates the AI chip industry:

• The main chip Cerebras sells, called the Wafer-Scale Engine 3, could provide an alternative to Nvidia’s GPUs; Cerebras says its chips can perform inference work faster and use less power than Nvidia’s GPUs, which are less specialized towards inference work. Cerebras secured a $20 billion commitment in January from OpenAI to help supply the ChatGPT-parent with compute power, and Amazon Web Services said in March it’d bring Cerebras chips into its data centers. It’s a defining shift for Cerebras, which previously counted on G42, an Abu Dhabi-based AI company, for the majority of its revenue.
• At the same time, major tech companies including Amazon and Google are creating their own chips meant to take some of the workload away from Nvidia’s chips. Nvidia’s GPUs are still the gold standard for many AI operations, but a new wave of chips could make it so companies can supplement Nvidia’s GPUs with cheaper and more efficient sources of compute power.

Seeking Savings: AI is shifting to a new stage. Now that companies have trained their models, they’re investing in the infrastructure needed to keep them running. Chips that are specialized in running, rather than training, AI can save companies money. And the companies need that cost savings as onlookers question their massive capital expenditures. Layoffs alone aren’t enough to offset AI’s costs, especially in cases where AI’s been found to cost more than the human workers it’s looking to replace.

There isn’t (yet) a vaccine for the Andes virus, the rare type of hantavirus that has stirred up waves of international concern following an outbreak last month on the cruise ship MV Hondius.

There is, however, a treatment for excess investor enthusiasm: a bucket of cold water. Moderna stock, which popped last week on news of positive tests among the ship’s passengers, went into reverse gear on Monday. Officials continue to emphasize it’s unlikely the virus spreads widely, with a pandemic risk even less likely, which deflated the trade.

Much Ado About No Meaningful Revenue Opportunity

The outbreak of hantavirus on MV Hondius, a Dutch cruise ship that sailed from Argentina and disembarked in Tenerife on May 10, is a serious concern for those who were on board and for health officials working to contain the outbreak. Nine cases, including three deaths, have been reported to the World Health Organization. Of 18 US citizen passengers who arrived back in the country on Monday, officials said one tested positive. All are being monitored and are in quarantine, as are other foreign nationals who returned to their home countries.

While hantaviruses are most frequently contracted via exposure to rodents, the Andes strain involved in the ship outbreak can be transmitted between people. Just don’t freak out, as it doesn’t spread efficiently like influenza or SARS-CoV-2. Still, it’s concerning enough to have rocketed shares of Moderna, which has conducted “early-stage and ongoing” research on hantaviruses with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Korea University College of Medicine. Its stock price closed at $54.35 on Friday, nearly 20% above its $45.37 close on May 1. However, shares fell 2.7% on Monday as leading health officials and experts continued to preach that the risk to the public ranges from “low” (WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) to “very, very low” (US Health and Human Services department Admiral Brian Christine). Analysts had already cautioned traders last week against eagerness:

• Evercore ISI analysts said in a note they “see no meaningful revenue opportunity” for Moderna in hantaviruses, and dismissed “any potential outsized moves as sentiment-driven, not fundamental.”
• The amount of research dollars spent on hantaviruses also indicates its place in the global pecking order of concern. According to the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat, only $7.5 million was spent on hantavirus-related R&D in 2024, the most recent year with available data, the smallest amount of funding among the pathogens tracked by the group.

Delayed Reaction: Dr. Olivier le Polain, an epidemiologist at the WHO, explained Monday that it’s likely new Andes virus cases linked to the outbreak on the MV Hondius will be reported in the coming days, because hantaviruses have an unusually long incubation period that averages up to three weeks and can run as long as 45 days before symptoms emerge.

The housing market has been the powder keg that never goes boom.

Existing home sales inched up just 0.2% in April, according to data released Monday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The sluggish pace defied consensus economist expectations of a gain of as much as 3%, and puts to rest any notions that the housing market’s three-year-long slumber may finally be over.

Expectations, Meet Realty

There’s a reason experts were primed for an uptick. A RedFin report published late March found that there were 46% more sellers in the market than buyers in February, an imbalance totaling around 630,000. That marked the biggest gap on record going back to 2013, prompting the real estate listings giant to declare “a buyer’s market.” Mortgage rates also fell below 6% in late February for the first time since 2022, further fueling hopes of a spring-time market thaw.

Instead, home sales dropped an adjusted 2.9% year-over-year in March, according to the NAR, and those hopes are starting to look like the market that never was, a dream shattered by the vibecession:

• After falling below the psychologically-important 6% figure, mortgage rates began climbing again due to the oil-price shock effects of the Iran War. Last week, the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage climbed to 6.37%, according to Freddie Mac.
• The national median existing-home price also rose in April to $417,700, up 0.9% year-over-year and the highest for any April on record, per the NAR. Consumer sentiment, meanwhile, dropped to the lowest level on records going back 74 years, according to the University of Michigan’s report published last week, which also found that consumers’ perception of their own financial health fell to the lowest level since 2009.

Stock Market: On the other hand, expectations of an uptick may have been a touch detached from the hard data. Housing supply remains relatively constricted; inventory ticked up 5.8% from April to March, to 4.4 months’ worth of housing stock. But anything under six months is considered tight, in the territory of a seller’s market. “We really need to see 30% growth in inventory, but we are not seeing that,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement Monday. The total inventory of 1.47 million homes remains short of the 1.83 million home inventory in the April before covid.