The IPO Comeback: Why Tech Giants Are Finally Going Public | All-In Liquidity IPO Panel
Episode
32 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Relationships, Investing, Fundraising & VC
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓IPO Reality Check: Going public changes almost nothing operationally. Cerebras priced at $18.50, opened at $32, reached a $5–6B market cap, yet Feldman notes that vendor relationships, engineering progress, and sales pipelines remain identical the morning after listing. The primary tangible benefits are employee morale, balance sheet cash, and enterprise credibility with risk-averse customers.
- ✓Space-Based Data Centers Timeline: Planet Labs and Google's analysis shows space-based compute becomes cheaper than terrestrial data centers when launch costs reach $200–300 per kilogram. Current costs sit just above $1,000/kg, down 10x over a decade. Solar panels in sun-synchronous orbit generate five times more energy than ground-based panels with zero battery requirement, making the infrastructure model straightforward once launch economics close.
- ✓AI Silicon Architecture Principle: Building a chip that resembles a competitor's design yields approximately zero chance of outperforming them. Cerebras solved AI's core bottleneck — moving data between memory and compute — by building a dinner-plate-sized chip with on-chip SRAM directly adjacent to compute, delivering 15–18x speed advantage over GPUs for OpenAI workloads. Domain-specific architecture, not incremental GPU iteration, drives step-change performance gains.
- ✓Post-IPO Value Capture: Historical data consistently shows more absolute dollar value is created after IPO than before. Planet Labs stock moved from $5 to $50 — a 10x gain — entirely in public markets after a 2021 SPAC listing. LP pressure to distribute shares immediately post-lockup causes funds to forfeit the majority of returns, as demonstrated by Altimeter's MongoDB investment that went from $3–4B at distribution to $50B shortly after.
- ✓Earth Data as AI's Missing Layer: Current large language models are trained exclusively on internet text and lack real-world physical data. Planet Labs images the entire Earth daily across a 200-satellite fleet, creating a time-series dataset covering agriculture, energy, flooding, and security. Feeding this physical-world data into AI models unlocks what Marshall calls "planetary intelligence" — AI capable of answering real-world operational questions, not just text-based ones.
What It Covers
Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman and Planet Labs CEO Will Marshall join Brad Gerstner at an All-In liquidity panel to discuss their IPO experiences, the convergence of AI and space infrastructure, next-generation silicon architecture, and why public market investors may capture more value than private ones in the current tech cycle.
Key Questions Answered
- •IPO Reality Check: Going public changes almost nothing operationally. Cerebras priced at $18.50, opened at $32, reached a $5–6B market cap, yet Feldman notes that vendor relationships, engineering progress, and sales pipelines remain identical the morning after listing. The primary tangible benefits are employee morale, balance sheet cash, and enterprise credibility with risk-averse customers.
- •Space-Based Data Centers Timeline: Planet Labs and Google's analysis shows space-based compute becomes cheaper than terrestrial data centers when launch costs reach $200–300 per kilogram. Current costs sit just above $1,000/kg, down 10x over a decade. Solar panels in sun-synchronous orbit generate five times more energy than ground-based panels with zero battery requirement, making the infrastructure model straightforward once launch economics close.
- •AI Silicon Architecture Principle: Building a chip that resembles a competitor's design yields approximately zero chance of outperforming them. Cerebras solved AI's core bottleneck — moving data between memory and compute — by building a dinner-plate-sized chip with on-chip SRAM directly adjacent to compute, delivering 15–18x speed advantage over GPUs for OpenAI workloads. Domain-specific architecture, not incremental GPU iteration, drives step-change performance gains.
- •Post-IPO Value Capture: Historical data consistently shows more absolute dollar value is created after IPO than before. Planet Labs stock moved from $5 to $50 — a 10x gain — entirely in public markets after a 2021 SPAC listing. LP pressure to distribute shares immediately post-lockup causes funds to forfeit the majority of returns, as demonstrated by Altimeter's MongoDB investment that went from $3–4B at distribution to $50B shortly after.
- •Earth Data as AI's Missing Layer: Current large language models are trained exclusively on internet text and lack real-world physical data. Planet Labs images the entire Earth daily across a 200-satellite fleet, creating a time-series dataset covering agriculture, energy, flooding, and security. Feeding this physical-world data into AI models unlocks what Marshall calls "planetary intelligence" — AI capable of answering real-world operational questions, not just text-based ones.
Notable Moment
Feldman recounted that when Cerebras brought employees who had worked nine-plus years to the NYSE floor alongside their families, he discovered engineers actually own ties — and that the event carried the emotional weight of a family milestone, particularly for children of immigrants whose parents had waited a decade for this moment.
Episode Transcript
2026 could be an all time record for IPOs. The AI IPO of the year so far, that company is Cerebras. Cerebras Systems founder and CEO Andrew Feldman. We are participating in something extraordinary. On everything we do, we are the fastest bar none. Well, Marshall is the cofounder and CEO of Planet Labs. Space and AI are really, a match made in heaven. They're getting married, in fact. Just like Google figured out how to index the Internet and make it searchable, we are indexing the Earth and making it searchable. He's got his glasses, the famous red glasses. Brad Gerstner's here, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital, a leading tech investment firm. I believe that the wave is the biggest wave in the history of technology will be incredibly beneficial for America. I'm rooting for all of them because I'm rooting for America. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Brad Gerstner, Will Marshall, and Andrew Feldman. Hey. It's Matt. Last last time I saw you, we were in Davos. Yes. We were in Davos causing trouble. I'm gonna drop another JKL. Do you know that little Davos y'all? I was just you know, it was pre IPO. We're chopping it up. It's Davos. We're in Davos. Hanging out at Davos. Well, no. Listen, I was everybody knows the story. I'm supposed to go on my yearly Japan ski trip. Saks calls me. With Tucker? Yeah. Well, anyway, we we don't drop that name, but, I'll pick it up for you. Put it over here. So anyway, so I cancel on Tucker. I cancel ski trip because Saks calls me and says, listen, POTUS needs you, the world's greatest moderator in Davos. No problem. I said I said, POTUS, POTUS, and Davos. So I said, when? He says, in three days. I say, you got it. I go and they give me a badge and it's like the special green badge and they buzz you through the security. And I look at the monitor, and it says, Jason McCabe Calacanis with Donald J Trump. Oh, wow. How did you feel? I thought it was hilarious. So then I went, and we did a great interview there. And we did, like, six or seven of these great all in interviews, and it was fun. Let's start this because, the two of you guys run two of the most interesting and consequential newly public companies in the stock market. Andrew Feldman is the founder and CEO of Cerebras. Will Marshall is the founder and CEO of Planet Labs. But you are also the insight and a gateway for all of us to understand these two big trends. One is in AI silicon. The other one is in space data centers. I think it would be a really interesting thing to And they're emerging. And emerging. Yep. But let's just take one step back. You just heard the last conversation about being public, going public early. Let's just talk about that because I'm …
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