CBRS Stock Surges Over 6% in Monday Pre-Market: What's the Sam Altman Connection?

Cerebras Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRS) shares rose 6.56% in premarket trading Monday after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described the chipmaker as "a close partner," easing concerns about the companies’ relationship. On Friday, Altman took to X and said OpenAI and Cerebras have "a deep engagement pushing on the frontiers of speed," addressing speculation about the partnership and emphasizing efforts to accelerate artificial intelligence computing. There is some speculation about our partnership with Cerebras.Cerebras is a close partner, and we have a deep engagement pushing on the frontiers of speed.— Sam Altman (@sama) October 2, 2026 Meanwhile, Barclays analyst Tom O’Malley said OpenAI’s "relationship remains strong" with Cerebras, Investing.com reported on Monday. He pointed out that while Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) is running OpenAI’s new GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast model, Cerebras remains the preferred provider but is constrained by supply. O’Malley called the multi-day sell-off in Cerebras shares “overdone,” saying investors had overreacted to concerns that OpenAI is using Nvidia GPUs for its new model. Read Also: Sam Altman Breaks With Anthropic on AI Regulation, Says World Must Accept ‘Some Bad Things’ as AI Benefits Outweigh Harms Cerebras Upgraded as AI Demand Outpaces Supply On Friday, analyst Paul Meeks upgraded Cerebras to Buy and maintained a $209 price target and noted that AI hardware demand is likely to far exceed supply for years, leaving Cerebras Systems room to do “plenty of business” with OpenAI. He added that the company also has strong partnerships with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) and Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) AWS. As Cerebras specializes in fast AI inference, Nvidia chips may handle the initial “prefill” phase while Cerebras chips could still be needed for the “decode,” or response, phase, he stated. In August, the company launched its CS-4 system, which it says generates answers up to 30 times faster than GPU-based options from rivals like Nvidia. It reached over 4,400 tokens per second per user on GPT-OSS-120B, about twice its predecessor’s speed, with first systems due this quarter. Shares had also faced a supply-related overhang. Last week, a 19.4 million-share unlock added stock to the market. Cerebras’ IPO lockup is structured as 11 staggered releases, including three larger waves, the latest of which just occurred, with others due Oct. 14 and Oct. 28. Those three waves will free about 58 million shares for public trading.Price Action: On a year-to-date basis, CBRS stock is down 52.45%, as per Benzinga Pro. On Friday, it fell 1.82% to close at $166.43. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Read Also: Broadcom Chases NVIDIA With $60 Billion Financing Plan for AI Customers Photo courtesy: Shutterstock