Cerebras: Why the hype?

Cerebras: Why the hype?

Freshly listed chip stock Cerebras Systems [CBRS] rose 6% Monday on reports it would receive fast-track inclusion in the S&P Dow Jones indices. Its IPO last week priced 30m shares at $185, though the stock opened at $350 amid heavy demand and closed its first session up 68%. Meanwhile, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest disclosed purchases of roughly 255,000 shares, reflecting continued investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and compute platforms.

“Data centre alley” tie-up announced

NextEra Energy [NEE] has agreed to merge with Dominion Energy [D] in an all-stock deal creating a $420bn power giant, amid surging electricity demand driven by AI data-centre expansion. The combined group would serve more than 10m homes and businesses across the US southeast, while giving NextEra greater exposure to northern Virginia’s “data centre alley”, where Dominion supplies power to a large share of the AI infrastructure ecosystem.

Blackstone and Google challenge Nvidia

On Monday, the world’s largest alternative asset manager [BX] and Alphabet’s [GOOGL] Google announced the formation of an AI cloud group expected to bring 500MW of data centre capacity online by end-2027. The venture is to be funded by Blackstone’s investment of $5bn, which could grow to $25bn with leverage, while the search giant will provide its custom tensor processor units. The move is seen as an attempt to challenge the sector domination of Nvidia’s [NVDA] GPUs.

Three smaller-cap chip stocks to watch 

Nvidia will dominate the headlines when it reports fiscal Q1 2027 earnings today. As its share price continues to hit new highs, investors might be wondering whether they have missed the breakout. A substitute investment strategy could be to focus on small- and medium-cap alternatives. CMC Aureon examines three smaller-cap chip stocks that could still benefit from AI-fuelled upside: Alpha and Omega Semiconductor [AOSL], Navitas [NVTS] and Wolfspeed [WOLF]. 

Will robots save China?

Barclays thinks China’s deployment of humanoid robots could offset up to 60% of its projected labour force decline by 2035, Bloomberg reported. The bank estimates China’s workforce could shrink by 37 million people over the next decade, but under optimistic assumptions the country could deploy roughly 24 million humanoid robots by 2035, equivalent to almost 4% of the labour force.

Nintendo rebounds on AI fatigue

The Japanese gamemaker [NTDOY] recorded three straight days of gains on Tuesday, its longest winning streak since March, as investors rotate out of AI stocks into other sectors. The stock has fallen around 28% in the year to date, weighed down by worries about the rising costs of memory hardware, but appears to be rebounding amid a rally in the wider gaming sector. 

Three quantum stocks to watch: IONQ, RGTI and HQ

Following on from their recent earnings calls, CMC Aureon examines three stocks from across the quantum spectrum: IonQ [IONQ], the pace-setting incumbent; Rigetti Computing [RGTI], the industrial challenger; and Horizon Quantum [HQ], the emerging disruptor. Unpacking their respective prints reveals a lot about their individual trajectories, as well as that of the sector as a whole.