The IPO Comeback: Why Tech Giants Are Finally Going Public | All-In Liquidity IPO Panel
Cerebras is running OpenAI workloads 15 to 18 times faster than standard GPUs, proving that staying off the standard GPU architecture path pays off.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
The IPO Comeback: Why Tech Giants Are Finally Going Public | All-In Liquidity IPO Panel
Cerebras is running OpenAI workloads 15 to 18 times faster than standard GPUs, proving that staying off the standard GPU architecture path pays off.
TL;DR
This panel from the All-In Liquidity Summit explores the rapid shifting of tech giants back into public markets. Cerebras Systems CEO Andrew Feldman and Planet Labs CEO Will Marshall join hosts Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Sacks to break down the operational realities of going public [1] — Andrew Feldman "Going public involves massive administrative overhead with negligible direct impact on core operations. High-fives and celebration are grea…" 03:04 , the massive opportunities in specialized AI silicon [2] — Andrew Feldman "15x to 18x Faster than GPUs: By resolving critical memory bottlenecks, Cerebras achieves massive speed gains on production-grade machine le…" 23:56 , and the upcoming merger of space-based data networks and machine learning [3] — Will Marshall "By leveraging sun-synchronous orbits, space-based data centers can access five times more solar energy than terrestrial systems without nee…" 15:16 . The single most useful takeaway is that to achieve true breakthrough performance in AI hardware, companies must build dedicated, non-GPU architectures that resolve memory bottlenecks rather than copycat designs [4] — Andrew Feldman "Our view as computer architects is if you want to be 20 times better than somebody, right, your architecture can't look like them. It can't…" 22:53 .
CEOs Andrew Feldman (Cerebras) and Will Marshall (Planet Labs) join the Besties to discuss going public, timelines for datacenters in space, AI's impact on the silicon market, and founder perspectives on liquidity on the road to going public.
- tour de force
- An elevated term describing a powerful, sweeping, or artistic presentation; used by Andrew Feldman to mock Jason's rapid-fire celebrity name-dropping.
- CFIUS
- Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency committee authorized to review foreign investments in domestic businesses for national security risks.
- SPAC
- An alternative public offering vehicle where a shell company acquires a private operating business to take it public.
- domain-specific architectures
- Specialized computer chips custom-built to handle highly specific mathematical workloads, rather than general-purpose processors.
- time-bounded
- A mathematical or technical trajectory where progress is measured in processing time limits rather than transistor counts.
- sun-synchronous orbit
- A specialized satellite orbit where the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time.
- dribble lockup
- A novel structured transition mechanism where lockup shares are gradually released to the public market based on stock performance triggers.
Chapter 1 · 00:00
CEOs Andrew Feldman (Cerebras) and Will Marshall (Planet Labs) join the Besties!
Just like Google figured out how to index the Internet and make it searchable. We are indexing the Earth and making it searchable.
Chapter 2 · 02:05
Both CEOs on going public: Impact on employees, customers, and business operations
The brutal truth about the IPO process: "The next morning you've sold no more stuff."
Going public involves massive administrative overhead with negligible direct impact on core operations. High-fives and celebration are great, but the day after the IPO, your engineering and supply chain projects face the exact same realities.
Cerebras spent years overcoming CFIUS concerns and geopolitical hurdles. Everything was incredibly difficult until it suddenly became easy, with the pricing range raised twice before hitting a massive public valuation.
The wafer-scale chip pioneer navigated complex CFIUS scrutiny and geopolitical friction for nine years before rapidly pricing its public offering.
An IPO is more than just a financial milestone; it represents a major emotional landmark for long-term employees. For many engineers and immigrant families, the public listing provides a powerful form of external validation.
For companies serving critical industries like agriculture and defense, an IPO is a maturing event. Global governments and sovereign customers need to know their primary space data suppliers aren't going to vanish overnight.
The pricing range was elevated twice based on overwhelming market interest, reflecting intense institutional appetite for AI infrastructure stocks.
The market debut saw shares trade far above the baseline pricing, indicating a significant premium applied to alternative AI architectures.
Planet Labs operates a massive constellation of 200 satellites to capture daily global updates. By tracking every change on Earth in real time, they empower farmers, civil governments, and intelligence networks with unprecedented insights.
The company operates the world's largest active constellation of daily earth-imaging platforms to gather continuous spatial data.
While tracking environmental and agricultural assets, geopolitical demand has pushed defense and intelligence applications to a clear revenue majority.
Massive private launch initiatives have successfully driven down the baseline capital expenditure required to put hardware in orbit.
Chapter 3 · 13:18
Timelines for datacenters in space
Why the future of computing is powered by orbital solar arrays.
After flying under the radar following a 2021 SPAC listing, Planet Labs experienced a dramatic market re-rating from $5 to $50.
The integration of localized machine learning models with ongoing planetary imagery creates an enormous, high-value commercial software market.
By leveraging sun-synchronous orbits, space-based data centers can access five times more solar energy than terrestrial systems without needing batteries. With launch costs dropping toward $200 per kilogram, orbital compute is becoming financially viable.
A decade-old study modeled the inflection point where space computing defeats standard terrestrial operational cost models.
The price to transport payloads into low earth orbit continues to fall rapidly, moving closer to the threshold for massive space data centers.
Satellites positioned in continuous sunlight bypass atmospheric scattering and rotational dark periods to maintain highly efficient power generation.
Chapter 4 · 19:28
Cerebras business breakdown, AI's impact on the silicon market
How AI permanently changed the capabilities and market size of computer processors.
Compute historically focused almost entirely on numerical calculations. AI represents a foundational shift, enabling silicon to natively decode, synthesize, and leverage language and images for the first time in computing history.
To beat NVIDIA, you cannot build a standard GPU. Cerebras took a contrarian route, manufacturing a dinner-plate-sized wafer chip that places memory directly next to the compute engines, eliminating the critical data transfer bottleneck.
By resolving critical memory bottlenecks, Cerebras achieves massive speed gains on production-grade machine learning models.
Chapter 5 · 24:45
How Founder/CEOs think about liquidity on the road to going public
Why VCs and LPs make more money after the IPO than before.
Historically, the absolute scale of wealth generation occurs in the public markets, not the private phase. Long-term institutional investors and VCs capture far greater gains by holding onto high-growth stocks post-IPO.
Large language models are blind to physical reality because they are trained solely on the internet. By feeding physical, real-time planetary sensor data directly into space-based AI networks, we will build a highly actionable 'planetary intelligence' system.
No indexed bits in this chapter.
Show stoppers
By leveraging sun-synchronous orbits, space-based data centers can access five times more solar energy than terrestrial systems without needing batteries. With launch costs dropping toward $200 per kilogram, orbital compute is becoming financially viable.
By resolving critical memory bottlenecks, Cerebras achieves massive speed gains on production-grade machine learning models.
Snapshots ()
Key Quotes ()
This episode
Claims & Sources
Factual claims made this episode, and whether a source was named.
Cerebras Systems priced its IPO with a valuation range that was taken up two times and priced at $1.85 per share.
Cerebras Systems stock opened at $320 a share and was trading around $230 a share with a market capitalization of approximately $5.06 trillion dollars at the time of the recording.
Planet Labs stock rose from $5 per share to $50 per share in the twelve months preceding the panel, representing a 10x market movement.
Planet Labs operates the largest earth-imaging satellite fleet, consisting of approximately 200 satellites imaging the entire Earth daily.
Security applications account for roughly 60% of Planet Labs' current revenue.
Rocket launch costs have decreased approximately four to five times over the preceding ten years.
Earth observation and the associated AI layer represent a market opportunity of $75 billion to $100 billion.
A Google and Planet Labs study concluded that space-based data centers become cheaper than terrestrial data centers when launch costs drop to $200-$300 per kilogram.
Satellite launch costs are just over $1,000 per kilogram at the time of the recording, down approximately ten times over the last decade.
A space-based solar panel on a sun-synchronous dawn-dusk orbit can collect five times more energy than a terrestrial solar panel.
Cerebras Systems chips deliver 15 to 18 times faster performance than standard GPUs when utilized by OpenAI.
Planet Labs originally went public via a SPAC in the year 2021 at a $2 billion valuation.
This episode
Cast
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The annual global conference where Jason McCabe Calacanis moderated panels.
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WAfer-scale AI hardware pioneer founded and led by Andrew Feldman.
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Semiconductor giant whose GPUs are widely used for AI training.
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Earth observation satellite operator founded and led by Will Marshall.
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Multinational technology giant partnering on space TPU tests.
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Space transport giant driving down satellite launch costs per kilogram.
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Silicon Valley capital firm led by Brad Gerstner.
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The premier marketplace where Cerebras and other tech giants are debuting.
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The prominent AI research lab utilizing Cerebras wafer chips.
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