Goodfin Wire 16 - Cerebras IPO, Tech IPO Summit, and Reserve Spotlight

The public market era of native AI starts now.

The IPO window is cracking open — and the companies stepping through it are unlike anything public markets have priced before. This edition puts you inside that moment: Goodfin hosts Tech IPO Summit at Nasdaq MarketSite during NY Tech Week, Cerebras will begin trading, and a member who sold to YouTube and helped build self-driving cars at Uber shares how he thinks about private markets. Plus, the signals worth watching across AI infrastructure and OpenAI's quiet push toward silicon independence. Let’s go.

→ Goodfin Tech IPO Summit in New York City—An official event of NYTech Week by a16z. At Nasdaq MarketSite. Secure your spot.
→ Cerebras IPO—Milestone for private markets and Goodfin investors.
→ Techno-optimism and the private markets ladder—Meet Reserve Member Eli Schleifer.
→ Members Poll—Are you locked in or waiting for first week performance?

Kick off IPO season on June 2nd at Nasdaq MarketSite during NY Tech Week! Goodfin is hosting a curated gathering at the intersection of private and public markets, built around one observation: the companies going public in 2026 are unlike anything the market has seen before. The valuations are unprecedented. The employee equity stakes are life-changing. And the old frameworks aren't holding. Join industry leaders as we unpack what’s coming—and what it signals for the future of capital markets, investor access, and the next generation of private companies. RSVP below. Spots are limited.

Female Investors Club and Goodfin are bringing together investors and allocators for a focused session on investing in AI while using it to sharpen investment strategies. The evening features a candid investor panel, tactical insights, and a curated group of people who are actively deploying capital. We’ll break down where the most compelling opportunities are across industries and how leading investors are using AI to source deals, diligence companies, and make faster, more informed decisions.

Goodfin took the stage at FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego to demo how its agentic AI is reshaping private markets investing and wealth management. Our live demo showcased in real time how Goodfin serves two very different users equally powerfully:

We demonstrated how Goodfin’s AI-native platform helps users move from curiosity to conviction through personalized research, diligence, market intelligence, and execution support — all within one platform.

The broader theme: Financial institutions know their clients increasingly want access to private markets, but they also want tailored and in depth guidance. Goodfin bridges that gap by combining institutional-quality access with AI-powered intelligence that can scale personalized investing support.

Nvidia built chips for training models. Cerebras built chips for running them. As AI shifts from building to deploying, inference speed becomes the competitive edge — and Cerebras is positioned at the center of that transition. Tomorrow, the market assigns a number to that position.

Cerebras prices Wednesday evening and begins trading on Nasdaq under CBRS Thursday, May 14. IPO range: $150–$160 per share, up from $115–$125 last week, targeting ~$49 billion fully diluted. The offering was 20x oversubscribed — the largest IPO globally in 2026 so far. Behind the demand: $510M in 2025 revenue (up 76% YoY), 47% net margins, and a $20B+ multi-year commitment from OpenAI. AWS is now deploying Cerebras hardware directly inside its data centers via Amazon Bedrock.

For Goodfin investors holding a pre-IPO position: Congratulations! Pre-IPO shares were last trading at $102–$107 on secondary platforms. The IPO is pricing at $150–$160 — a 45–55% step-up before the first public trade. We'll be in touch with specifics on your position, conversion timing, and next steps.

Today he's the founder and CEO of Trunk.io, a developer tools platform that eliminates the hidden productivity tax inside the dev stack — the best merge queue on the market, paired with tooling that detects and quarantines flaky tests across any language, test runner, or CI provider. Companies like Gusto, Brex, and Zillow run on it. And how Eli builds Trunk.io is as notable as what it does: he's a vocal advocate for code-first engineering, a philosophy AI makes possible. "We built software the way we did because code was expensive. It's not anymore." At Trunk.io, engineers prototype working products before a designer opens Figma — then the team iterates on something real. The product roadmap barely extends to the middle of the quarter. 

His lens on private markets follows the same logic: bet on what's structurally changing and move before the consensus forms. Public markets are largely tapped out for the returns that matter — "that 100x only happens at the liquidity event and if you’re an employee." His approach: retirement funds stay in public markets; capital he wants to grow faster belongs in private markets. Just make sure you don’t need access to it for 5-6 years.  

His highest-conviction bets? AI and robotics. AI enables robotics at scale, and the robotics opportunity is underestimated. Elder care alone represents one of the largest unaddressed markets on the planet: billions aging globally, with far fewer people to support them. Within AI, he focuses on companies where enduring relevance is the base case — as in Anthropic and SpaceX. "These are nameplate businesses, the bread-and-butter bet.” 

So where does his conviction come from? “I’m a techno-optimist; I fall in the Gene Roddenberry camp and think about what technologies will change the future.” That worldview is what makes private markets the only place that makes sense to him. By the time transformational companies are publicly traded, the wealth-creating moment has already passed. The opportunity is in getting there early — and having the conviction to hold.

What he'd tell new investors: treat private markets like a CD ladder. “Different time horizons are critical. You need to pace out your investments so it yields exits on a 3 - 6 year horizon. If you invest in private markets all in the same year - you won't have a recurring opportunity for the next investment. So you need a ladder approach.”  

The patience isn't incidental — it's the strategy. And his under-the-radar signal for an investment? The VC layer. "Who’s underwriting the deal? What are the company reviews? Who’s leading the investment? You don't need to do all the work yourself.” The signal is already in who else believes in the company enough to put capital behind it. 

We're curating the minds shaping the moment. If that's you, or someone in your circle, let's talk.

The signal that matters surfaced for you. Here's what our AI pulled from the noise this week:

→ Cerebras IPO pops above $4.8B, signaling comeback for AI infrastructure plays. Cerebras Systems raised its IPO price range to $150-$160 per share, now seeking up to $4.8 billion in proceeds and targeting a fully diluted valuation of nearly $49 billion. The AI chipmaker's upsized offering—coming after a February 2026 restart—marks a turning point for hardware-focused AI companies. The company reported fourth-quarter revenue of $510 million (up 76% year-over-year) and net income of $87.9 million, signaling that the endless cash burn narrative around chip startups may finally be shifting. Nasdaq expects the IPO to take place on May 14. Read More

→ Lime files for IPO as micromobility bets it can survive growth-at-all-costs era. Lime, the electric scooter and bike rental startup backed by Uber, filed for an initial public offering in May 2026, intending to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "LIME." Lime had been eyeing an IPO for at least five years, holding out for the time when its growth, profitability and the economy were in the right place. The filing tests whether investors are ready to revisit urban mobility after years of bankruptcies and pivot-or-perish pressure. Read More

→ OpenAI's custom chip ambitions hit $18B financing wall as compute independence proves costly. OpenAI's effort to build custom AI chips with Broadcom has reportedly run into an $18 billion financing hurdle, part of OpenAI's broader push to reduce dependence on Nvidia and lower long-term compute costs. The snag underscores a hard truth: even the best-funded AI labs struggle with the capital burden of silicon independence. Meanwhile, Reuters has reported that the company is preparing for a potential IPO in the second half of 2026, possibly at a valuation approaching $1 trillion. Read More

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Votes split conviction across entry, hold, and exit timing suggesting members are less divided on the opportunity than on where we are in the cycle.

Inspo for those building: 79% of the world’s ultra-high net worth individuals—someone with excess of US$30 million net worth—built their net worth themselves, not from inheriting wealth, according to a recent report by data intelligence company Altrata.

The ‘Global Citizens: Entrepreneurship, Mobility and the Ultra Wealthy’ report, which was funded by financial advisory services firm Arton Capital, also stated that one in five were not born where they made their money.

A third of the ultra-wealthy studied abroad, while nearly one-fifth owns or co-owns a company headquartered outside of their home country.

h/t @tatlerleadership
Photos: Getty Images, Unsplash

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