NEW YORK (VINnews) – Andrew Feldman, the Jewish co-founder and chief executive of Cerebras Systems, became a billionaire overnight after the artificial intelligence company’s blockbuster Nasdaq debut Thursday.

Shares of Cerebras surged 68% in their first day of trading, pushing the company’s valuation close to $100 billion and lifting Feldman’s stake to an estimated $3.2 billion. Co-founder Sean Lie also entered billionaire status as investors poured into one of the year’s most closely watched technology offerings.

The IPO marked a dramatic rise for Cerebras, which had previously withdrawn an earlier public offering attempt before later raising private capital at a significantly lower valuation. The company is now benefiting from the explosive global demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure and advanced computing systems used to power AI models.

Founded roughly a decade ago, Cerebras has positioned itself as a challenger in the AI chip industry, competing against larger semiconductor giants by developing massive “wafer-scale” processors designed specifically for artificial intelligence workloads. The company says its technology can outperform traditional graphics processing units in certain AI inference tasks, where systems respond directly to users.

Israeli business publication Globes reported that Feldman is described by people who know him as “a Jew who speaks a few words of Hebrew and previously volunteered on a kibbutz.” The report also noted that Cerebras was founded alongside several former Intel executives and has attracted notable Israeli-linked investors and technology figures.

Feldman has also publicly emphasized diversity and interfaith respect within the company’s culture. In a recent social media post, he highlighted the workplace relationship between employees of different faiths, writing, “Anis is Muslim. I’m Jewish,” while praising the spirit of cooperation and celebration inside Cerebras.

Before founding Cerebras, Feldman launched SeaMicro, a microserver company that was acquired by AMD in 2012 for approximately $334 million.

The successful debut also delivered massive gains for early investors. Among them were Israeli-born venture capitalist Lior Susan of Eclipse Capital and former Intel executive Dadi Perlmutter, both of whom invested in Cerebras during its early years.

Cerebras’ rise comes amid intensifying competition across the AI sector, where companies are racing to build the computing infrastructure needed to support increasingly powerful artificial intelligence systems. The company has also strengthened ties with OpenAI, which recently entered into a multi-year agreement with Cerebras for computing capacity and related AI services.