Shares of AI hardware names are broadly lower at midday Tuesday, hours ahead of Cerebras’ flagship SUPERNOVA product event, which begins at 3:30 PM Pacific Time (6:30 PM ET). Cerebras Systems (NASDAQ:CBRS) is down 13% to $220, while Intel (NASDAQ:INTC | INTC Price Prediction) has slid 7% and AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) is off 5%.
De-Risking Hits AI Hardware Before Supernova
The selloff is a classic buy-the-rumor, sell-the-news setup layered on top of a broader macro rotation. Cerebras surged into Tuesday’s event on a Wedbush endorsement and OpenAI’s confirmation that its GPT-5.6 Sol Ultrafast mode, capable of up to 750 output tokens per second, will run exclusively on Cerebras’ Wafer-Scale Engine. Morgan Stanley also reaffirmed Overweight and raised its price target Monday, projecting core revenue to more than triple by 2027.
That enthusiasm is unwinding today. A tranche of roughly 36.4 million shares became eligible for sale around August 14, creating a lockup-style overhang. Management also warned that renting back AI compute from an existing customer while its own data centers come online will weigh on gross margins. Cerebras still trades at roughly 58 times projected 2026 core revenue, making it acutely sensitive to any risk-off environment. For context, core revenue guidance for FY2026 was raised to $880 million to $890 million per the company’s SEC filings, and Q2 core revenue more than doubled to $210 million.
Macro Rotation Is the Real Story
The bigger driver is capital rotation. Anthropic told investors its ARR hit $65 billion at the end of July, and Reuters reported Anthropic is guiding investors to $190 billion to $200 billion in 2028 revenue. Both are enormous numbers, but reportedly below Silicon Valley whispers. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal flagged that nine top tech companies carry roughly $3 trillion of off-balance-sheet commitments mostly tied to AI, growing faster than the roughly $600 billion of traditional capex over the past year. All of that spend has to be powered, cooled, and networked by somebody, which is why we pulled together seven suppliers behind the buildout in a free AI infrastructure report.
Rates are compounding the pressure. The 30-year Treasury yield hit a 19-year high today, with the FRED series showing the 30-year at 5.25% as of August 14 and the 10-year at 4.7%, sitting in the 96th percentile of the past year. Higher long yields hit long-duration AI names hardest.
Selling Is Uniform Across Compute, Memory, and Optics
The tell today is uniformity. Compute names are falling in line with memory and optics, which suggests this is a wholesale de-risking rather than company-specific news. Optical connectivity beneficiary Coherent, memory leader Micron Technology, and storage pure-play Western Digital are all lower in sympathy. The VIX still sits at a modest 15.19, which tells you this is a rotation dynamic at work.
Intel and AMD are giving back a portion of massive one-year runs. INTC is still up 321% over one year, and AMD is up 185% over the same period. AMD’s Q2 was strong, with record revenue of $11.5 billion and data center revenue up 107% year over year, and Q3 guidance was set at approximately $13 billion. That is exactly the kind of setup where profit-taking dominates on a risk-off day.
What to Watch
Cerebras’ Supernova livestream at 6:30 PM ET is the pivot. A next-generation Wafer-Scale Engine reveal is the key catalyst, especially if it extends the inference-speed narrative that the GPT-5.6 tie-up validated. If the event underwhelms, expect the selling in AI hardware to bleed into Wednesday.
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