Artificial Intelligence

UAE-backed Cerebras passes US security check before IPO

April 1, 2025, 10:25 AM

Cerebras founders Sean Lie, Gary Lauterbach, Michael James, Jean-Philippe Fricker and Andrew Feldman. Abu Dhabi's G42 is about to invest $335m in the company

Links with Abu Dhabi’s G42 probed
G42 is Cerebras’ main client
‘Vote of confidence’ in UAE

Cerebras Systems has cleared a US government review into its ties to the UAE’s G42, a spokesperson for the US artificial intelligence company told AGBI on Monday.

The positive conclusion of the probe by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is expected to pave the way for the California-based company’s long-awaited initial public offering.

CFIUS is a US interagency committee tasked with ensuring that inbound investments do not pose a national security threat. It had been looking into the $335 million that G42, an Abu Dhabi-based AI developer partially owned by sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, planned to put into Cerebras, according to news reports.

Beyond being an early investor and partner, G42 is also the biggest client of Cerebras, encompassing 87 percent of its earnings in the first six months of 2024.

Cerebras, viewed as a prospective challenger to industry behemoth Nvidia, triggered the CFIUS review in September through a voluntary disclosure of the proposed G42 investment, which is estimated at about 5 percent of its value.

The two companies later argued the probe might not be necessary after all as G42 would only purchase non-voting shares, and ultimately applied to withdraw their notice to CFIUS altogether, according to Reuters.

They expected the committee would decide one way or another by the end of last year. Instead, Cerebras was still awaiting clearance days ago as the new Trump administration faced delays in filling key positions across agencies.

The probe’s resolution, first reported by Bloomberg, comes only two weeks after Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s deputy ruler and UAE national security advisor, met US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Washington to discuss expanding UAE access to advanced American semiconductors.

Sheikh Tahnoon is chairman of G42. The Treasury Department, which did not respond to a request for comment, oversees CFIUS.

“This is a significant milestone and a vote of confidence in the UAE regarding sensitive technologies,” said Mohammed Soliman, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute and member of the strategy advisory firm McLarty Associates.

“It should make other deals much easier and more streamlined in the future.”

G42 is already party to a landmark $1.5 billion agreement with Microsoft that involves exports of American microchips to the UAE. That deal secured formal US government approval in December after G42 swore off its ties to Chinese tech companies last summer.

Soliman says that the CFIUS decision on Cerebras offers an early view into how the Trump administration is likely to seek “balance” in restricting exports of sensitive dual-use technology to ringfence it from China while still engaging in commercial partnerships with emerging “AI powers” like the UAE.