Cerebras stock drops 20% as hardware sales fall despite AI cloud growth

Cerebras shares fell nearly 20% after the company missed earnings expectations. Hardware sales declined even as the company's AI cloud revenue grew 281% year-over-year.

Why it matters: The split result, hardware sales down while cloud/inference revenue climbs sharply, suggests customers increasingly buy AI compute as a service rather than purchasing Cerebras chips outright, mirroring a broader industry shift in how AI compute gets monetized. It's also a reminder that even fast-growing AI infrastructure companies stay volatile and dependent on hitting Street expectations, not just growth rates.