Cerebras challenges Nvidia with huge investments in artificial intelligence in Europe

The American chip manufacturing startup Brainscompetitor of the giant Nvidiawill invest “several billion dollars” to increase the computing capacity of its AI data centers in Europe. The company itself announced this to AFP. “This is a massive expansion,” Andrew Feldman, the company’s CEO, explained on the sidelines of the Raise Summit, aimed at meeting the rapidly growing needs of European customers. The California-based company operates three data centers equipped with its own chips in France, Finland and Norway, which will be expanded to reach a computing capacity of 200 MW by 2027.

With these data centers, “we believe we can meet European security and data protection requirements; we have many European customers asking us to do so,” he continued, specifying that demand for generative AI in Europe is very “rapid.”

Cerebras’ maxi-IPO

Founded in 2015, Cerebras raised more than $5.55 billion upon its IPO in the United States in May, making it among the fifteen largest fundraisers ever on Wall Street in a transaction of this type. The start-up, which has around 900 employees and is currently valued at $40 billion, develops giant processors also known as “systems on wafers” (wafer-scale systems) and has also specialized in chips dedicated to “inference”, i.e. the phase of using AI models when generating content, and not development.

Giant chip technology

“Traditionally, a chip is the size of a postage stamp, whereas we designed one as big as a plate,” Feldman reported. “In artificial intelligence, large chips process information faster, which means that when you type a question into an AI chatbot, you get an answer faster,” he explained.

Giant processors have the advantage of functioning as a single unit, while an assembly of smaller chips requires data transfer from one to another, which can cause slowdowns or malfunctions.

Cerebras’ European customers include pharmaceutical companies such as the British giant GSKhigh-performance computing centers in Scotland and Germany, as well as software development companies.