Q2 2026 Cerebras Systems Inc Earnings Call Transcript
Key Points
- Record core revenue of $209.9 million, up 103% year-over-year, beating guidance on all metrics.
- Core cloud and services revenue surged 287% year-over-year to $127.7 million, reflecting strong demand for fast inference.
- Core gross margin improved significantly to 40.6%, up 940 basis points year-over-year, with expectations to reach 60%+ in the future.
- Secured over 600 megawatts of data center capacity, with a pipeline in gigawatts, supporting massive growth plans.
- Strategic partnerships with AMD and AWS for disaggregated inference expand market opportunities and improve economics.
- RPO stands at $25.4 billion, providing strong revenue visibility and confidence in future growth.
- Manufacturing capacity expected to increase more than 10x in 2026, with further expansion planned for 2027.
- Strong balance sheet with over $8.6 billion in cash and investments, plus an unused $850 million credit facility.
- Technology advantages include no reliance on HBM or 3nm fab capacity, reducing supply chain risks.
- New customer wins in coding, agentic flows, and security (e.g., Figma, Cognition, CrowdStrike) diversify revenue streams.
- Core gross margin declined sequentially to 40.6% from 46.5% in Q1 2026 due to higher costs from renting back systems.
- Q3 2026 core gross margin expected to be the low point at 38-40%, with operating margin guidance of -25% to -23%.
- Heavy customer concentration risk, with OpenAI expected to remain a significant portion of revenue in 2027.
- Data center capacity remains a bottleneck, limiting growth despite securing 600 megawatts.
- Core operating loss of $33.6 million, though improving, indicates ongoing profitability challenges.
- Disaggregated inference solutions are not yet commercially deployed, with availability expected only in Q4 2026.
- AWS partnership revenue not yet reflected in RPO, with first revenues expected only in mid-2027.
- Potential competitive pressure from AMD's recent acquisition of an inference hardware company.
- Full-year 2026 core revenue guidance of $880-890 million implies a slowdown in growth from Q2's 103% year-over-year pace.
- Rising costs from renting back systems and building out capacity may pressure margins in the near term.
Good afternoon, and welcome to the Cerebras Systems second-quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings conference call.
(Operator Instructions)
I will now turn the call over to Sean Dorsey, head of investor relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Cerebras Systems' Q2 2026 earnings call. Earlier today, we issued our press release and posted our supplemental earnings presentation to the investor relations section of our website.
A replay of this webcast will also be available on our investor relations website following the call.
Joining me today are Andrew Feldman, our Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and President, and Bob Komen, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements under the safe harbor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1,995.
These statements include, but are not limited to, statements
| Access to All Earning Calls and Stock Analysis | |
| 30-Year Financial on one screen | |
| All-in-one Stock Screener with unlimited filters | |
| Customizable Stock Dashboard | |
| Real Time Insider Trading Transactions | |
| 8,000+ Institutional investors’ 13F holdings | |
| Powerful Excel Add-in and Google sheets Add-on | |
| All data downloadable | |
| Quick customer support | |
| And much more... |
Trustpilot
We'd love to learn more about your experiences on GuruFocus.com and how we can improve!
Take Survey
