Arm, SoftBank pursue Cerebras before IPO as valuation may hit $34 billion

Arm Holdings (ARM) and majority owner SoftBank recently made a preliminary approach to acquire Cerebras Systems, but the AI chip startup rejected the overture ahead of its expected IPO pricing on May 13, 2026, Bloomberg reported. Cerebras could be valued at about $34 billion in the listing, with pricing potentially above its earlier $150-to-$160 per-share range because of strong investor demand. The company plans to sell 30 million shares and raise as much as $4.8 billion, which would make it one of the largest global IPOs of 2026 and near Arm’s 2023 semiconductor IPO record. The attempted deal highlights rising competition in AI infrastructure, where Cerebras is positioning itself against Nvidia (NVDA) with wafer-scale processors for AI training and inference. SoftBank has been expanding its chip exposure, including a $6.5 billion acquisition of Ampere Computing, while Arm is preparing to launch its own chips for AI data centers. Arm shares have roughly doubled in 2026.