Cerebras Systems is significantly expanding its European infrastructure. The company will bring its first European data center capacity online by the end of 2026 and plans to scale this up to 200 MW by the end of 2027. Part of this capacity will support OpenAI workloads. The data centers will be located in France and the Nordic countries.
CEO Andrew Feldman made the announcement during the RAISE Summit in Paris. According to Cerebras, demand for local, low-latency AI infrastructure is growing among European companies, research institutions, and governments. These organizations are seeking alternatives to computing power that is currently concentrated primarily in the U.S. and Asia. This is one of several reasons why a formidable European competitor to the major AI labs in those regions has yet to emerge.
Data centers in Norway and Finland will contribute “significant capacity,” according to Feldman. The expansion brings the high-speed inference infrastructure closer to European users, which should result in faster response times for more complex AI workloads. Not only that, but this also means data does not have to leave the European continent.
OpenAI is driving the rollout
The European plans build on a major deal with OpenAI. As we previously reported, OpenAI signed a multi-year, $20 billion contract to deploy 750 megawatts of Cerebras chips for ChatGPT inference. OpenAI also provided credit to expand data center capacity, with an option to scale up to 2 GW.
That deal was one of several struck just before the IPO earlier this year. Cerebras also has a major partnership with AWS featuring a combined solution of both Trainium and Cerebras systems. Feldman previously mentioned that the company plans to open data centers in Israel, the UAE, Australia, Singapore, and India, among other locations.
Wafer-scale as a differentiator
Cerebras focuses on AI inference using chips built from entire silicon wafers rather than individual dies (“wafer-scale”). This design delivers high memory bandwidth but is difficult to manufacture at scale. In its first-quarter earnings report, the company forecast gross margins of 38 to 41 percent, well below those of Nvidia and AMD. Furthermore, the meteoric rise in the company’s market value on its first day of trading has not been followed by further growth; this is, however, fairly common for companies making their stock market debut.
Cerebras is not new to Europe. According to the University of Edinburgh, the EPCC previously deployed a cluster of four CS-3 systems. With the new rollout in France, Norway, and Finland, the company is taking a strategic step in the region.