Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman says wafer scale failed for 18 months

Andrew Feldman, who co-founded and runs the chip company Cerebras Systems, said his team spent about 18 months unable to build its main product. He said so on the podcast Uncapped, in an episode posted Sept. 15.

This matters most to people who own Cerebras or follow it in the stock news. It also touches anyone who uses AI, since chips like these are what AI runs on. Whether the chips are reliable decides what the companies buying them end up paying.

Feldman said the product is wafer scale, meaning a chip made from a whole silicon disc instead of a small piece cut from it. Nobody had done it, he said, and some people said it could never work. The company was spending about $8 million a month. Board meetings came every six weeks, and the update was always that they still couldn't make it. Feldman said the team kept going because it still had ideas. After each failure they ran a full analysis so they would not fail the same way twice. His line for it was "only new mistakes." It starts at 11:30. They first shattered wafers in seconds, then lasted minutes, then an hour.

The story in the news now is a short bet against the company. Crypto Briefing reports that Culper Research disclosed a short on Cerebras, alleging its wafer-scale chips last only 1.5 to 2.5 years and questioning depreciation changes.

The podcast was posted before that report and does not address it. Feldman talked about making the chips work at all, not how long they last. Cerebras sells these chips, so he has a stake in how they are judged.

Watch the 3 minutes where he describes the 18 months.9:37