Cerebras Raises 2026 Revenue Guidance, Discloses Microsoft Cloud Deal as Shares Jump

Cerebras Systems raised its full-year 2026 revenue forecast and disclosed a new cloud computing agreement with Microsoft, a combination that sent the AI chip and cloud company's shares more than 17% higher in extended trading on Thursday, according to a Reuters report carried by Charles Schwab.

Guidance Raised, Third-Quarter Results Beat Estimates

Cerebras now expects full-year 2026 adjusted revenue of $940 million to $960 million, up from its prior guidance of $880 million to $890 million, the company said on its third-quarter earnings call and as reported by Reuters. By our calculation, the midpoint of the new range, $950 million, is roughly $65 million, or about 7.3%, above the $885 million midpoint of the prior guidance.

For the quarter itself, Cerebras posted an adjusted profit of $29.82 million, compared with an adjusted loss of $10.86 million a year earlier, far exceeding the adjusted loss of $38.4 million analysts polled by LSEG had expected, per Reuters. Adjusted sales rose 70% to $230.9 million, beating the average analyst estimate of $214.70 million. On the earnings call, Cerebras executives described the result as record core revenue of $231 million, up 10% sequentially, exceeding the midpoint of their own guidance by $16 million, or 7%.

Adjusted cloud and services revenue, which reflects Cerebras' agreement with OpenAI, more than tripled year-over-year to $144.9 million in the quarter, Reuters reported. Company executives on the call put the year-over-year increase at 272%.

Microsoft Joins AWS and Oracle as Hyperscaler Customers

The headline disclosure was a new cloud deal with Microsoft. CEO Andrew Feldman confirmed the agreement on the earnings call but said specific details, including contract terms, would not be shared until next year. "We also signed an exciting deal with Microsoft, about which we will share more next year," Feldman said, according to the call transcript. Executives indicated fuller detail, including the timing of related revenue, would come in the first half of next year, with revenue from the arrangement expected to begin once that detail is announced.

Feldman framed the Microsoft agreement alongside Cerebras' existing relationships with Amazon Web Services and Oracle, saying it brings the company to three hyperscaler customers for its inference platform within the span of six months. Reuters noted that Oracle, last month, expanded its cloud AI chip offerings to include Cerebras hardware, and reported Feldman as saying the hardware will run in Oracle's data centers; on the earnings call, executives said the Cerebras-powered Oracle Cloud inference service is expected to launch in the summer of 2027. No comparable operational or timeline details for either the Microsoft or AWS relationships were disclosed in the reported materials.

Cerebras executives also pointed to a broader sales pipeline that has grown by more than 10 times in recent months, driven by hyperscalers, neoclouds, sovereign entities, enterprises, and AI-native customers, according to the earnings call transcript. In July, separate from the hyperscaler cloud deals, Cerebras had announced a partnership with AMD to pair AMD's Helios systems with Cerebras' wafer-scale engine for inference workloads.

OpenAI Backlog Remains the Dominant Driver

Cerebras' remaining performance obligations, a measure of contracted future revenue, totaled $26.1 billion as of September 30, a figure executives on the earnings call described as increased from the prior period. Reuters reported that this backlog is underpinned largely by Cerebras' computing agreement with OpenAI.

Feldman said OpenAI's business with Cerebras grew from the second quarter, but that Cerebras lacked the capacity to support a broad rollout of OpenAI's “Ultrafast” service tier, a faster offering OpenAI previewed in August for its GPT-5.6 Sol model, according to Reuters. By our reading of those remarks — an interpretation, not company guidance — near-term capacity constraints rather than customer demand may be limiting how quickly Cerebras can expand that specific product tier.

Context for the Share Reaction

Reuters noted that the stock had fallen 47.2% from its May IPO price heading into this report, as investors grew wary of the heavy infrastructure spending required to sustain AI growth industry-wide. Reuters described the raised guidance and Microsoft disclosure as "easing investor concerns about AI spending," which it tied to the more than 17% extended-trading gain. Beyond that framing, the available reporting does not break out how much of the move was attributable specifically to the earnings beat versus the Microsoft disclosure versus the broader guidance raise. Readers should treat the size of the reaction as a market response to the combined news rather than evidence of a single driver.

Feldman summarized the company's outlook on the call by saying, "As we look to the months ahead, we see two certainties: rapid change and compute shortages," a framing that ties Cerebras' raised guidance to its stated view of persistent demand against limited supply, though it is a forward-looking statement from the company rather than an independently verified fact.

Bottom Line

Cerebras beat Wall Street's third-quarter expectations, raised its 2026 revenue outlook, and added Microsoft to a hyperscaler customer list that already includes AWS and Oracle, all of which Reuters linked to a sharp extended-trading rally. Key specifics of the Microsoft arrangement, including deal size, duration, and start date for related revenue, remain undisclosed and are not expected until next year, according to Cerebras executives. The company's forward trajectory continues to hinge heavily on its OpenAI backlog and whether Cerebras can scale capacity to match a pipeline it says has grown more than tenfold in recent months.