Cerebras IPO Soars 68%, On-Chain Market Priced It Hours Before Listing

Regarded by the industry as "Nvidia's strongest challenger," Cerebras went public on the Nasdaq today.

Cerebras opened at $350, with an IPO price of $185. It briefly surged to $385, a premium of over 108% above the $185 IPO price, triggering an upside circuit breaker on its first day of trading.

While this premium was astonishing, traders noticed that TradeXYZ's on-chain Pre-IPO Perp was the most accurately priced platform for Cerebras, outperforming a host of traditional Pre-IPO platforms.

It is rumored that traders from Morgan Stanley are also looking at the Cerebras price K-line on Hyperliquid. Source: Community

What Exactly Did Pre-IPO Perp Disrupt?

Before diving into the comparison, let's first discuss the opening price of Cerebras's IPO.

On May 4th, Cerebras filed an amended S-1 with the SEC, with an initial pricing range of $115 to $125. This was the first public figure from the joint underwriting team of Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays, and UBS.

On May 8th, the price range was raised to $125 to $135. On May 11th, it was raised again to $150 to $160, and the number of shares increased from 28 million to 30 million. On the evening of May 13th, the final price was set at $185. On May 14th, it opened directly at $350.

Okay, now let's look at those platforms.

First is Forge Global, a private secondary market used by professional institutions. It appears to have the worst pricing.

Forge is one of the world's largest private equity secondary trading markets, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, serving institutional investors, VCs, and accredited individual investors. Its core product, "Forge Price," is an algorithmic pricing model that incorporates secondary market transactions, financing round information, and platform order book data, and is considered one of the most authoritative price references in the private market.

Accessing Forge requires accredited investor certification, with an annual income threshold of $200,000 or net assets exceeding $1 million. It's not a place an ordinary person can enter.

Cerebras's price trend on Forge is clear from the chart: from about $20 per share in 2023, stabilizing in the $30 to $40 range in early 2025, rapidly climbing with financing news in early 2026. On May 12th, the day before the IPO pricing, Forge Price's final reading was $113.50, corresponding to a valuation of $292.6 billion.

The deviation of Forge Price's $113.50 from the closing price of $311 is already 174%, let alone the opening price of $350.

Now look at the more active secondary market, Hiive. Hiive's positioning is similar to Forge, but it focuses more on active trade matching. Its user profile leans towards high-net-worth individual investors and small VCs, with a higher trading frequency than Forge. From Hiive's price trend chart, you can see that Cerebras's price updates on Hiive are more frequent and the volatility more pronounced.

Hiive's final transaction price was $224.93, labeled as "Final Hiive Price," which was the last valid price for Cerebras on the platform before its listing.

$224.93 is much more accurate than Forge's $113.50, but it still has a 38% deviation from the closing price of $311 and a 56% difference from the opening price of $350.

The reason Hiive's number is more accurate than Forge's is because its transactions occur later and are denser, capturing more market sentiment close to the IPO. However, it is still a one-sided market, only trading real equity, with no shorting mechanism and no 24/7 continuous matching.

Now let's look at TradeXYZ.

Launched on May 1st with an initial reference price of $175 and a maximum leverage of 5x, anyone in the world with a USDC wallet can participate—go long or go short.

Within two weeks, the on-chain Pre-IPO Perp traded steadily in the $288 to $320 range. At 10 PM on May 14th, three hours before the Nasdaq officially opened for retail trading, the CBRS on-chain contract price rapidly surged from the $290 range to $380, with a single-hour trading volume of nearly $100 million. The 24-hour total trading volume was $280 million, with open interest of $57.77 million, making it the platform's fourth most active stock contract.

Some might say that TradeXYZ was just lucky this time, that its accurate pricing was just a coincidence.

But this rebuttal overlooks a more important point: TradeXYZ's accurate pricing is not accidental, but structural.

Why TradeXYZ's Pricing is More Accurate

To understand why TradeXYZ's pricing is more accurate, one must first understand why investment banks have been able to monopolize pricing power in traditional IPOs for so long.

The operation of the traditional IPO pricing mechanism relies on a core premise: all judgments about "how much this company is worth" must be aggregated through the investment bank's order book.

The CEO and CFO fly to major financial centers, meeting with all major institutional investors within two weeks, telling the company's story one-on-one and collecting indicative prices. These indications all flow into the order book controlled by the underwriters.

No one knows what Fidelity is bidding, how many shares BlackRock subscribed for, or what Tiger Global's indicative price is. The investment bank is the only one with a complete view.

This information asymmetry creates the investment bank's bargaining power. They can set the price at a level that "clears the order book but leaves enough first-day gains for institutions." This is an art. A 20x oversubscribed order book indicates all institutions know $185 is low; but the investment bank locks this information away, sets the offering price at $185, institutions enjoy an 89% first-day gain at the open, and they return for the next roadshow.

But when a 24/7 market exists that allows anyone to participate, permits shorting, and has all positions verifiable in real-time on-chain, price information no longer needs to be aggregated through an order book.

The higher the barrier, the worse the pricing. The more open the market, the more accurate the price.

TradeXYZ allows global participation from anyone, with no asset threshold, no geographic restrictions, and no invitation system. Every transaction, every order is a participant publicly expressing their judgment on Cerebras's value with real money.

This means TradeXYZ's price aggregates a much broader set of information than a roadshow—not just institutional judgments, but also the judgments of all market participants aware of this IPO opportunity. More sources of information mean a price closer to true value.

Simultaneously, the shorting mechanism makes it harder for the price to be distorted.

Forge and Hiive are essentially one-sided markets. Sellers are employees or early investors looking to cash out; buyers are accredited investors bullish on the company. No one can publicly bet "I think this company is overvalued"—because there is simply no channel for shorting.

This creates a systematic bias: prices in a one-sided market can only be driven by upward pressure. Bearish sentiment has no outlet, so the final price systematically leans towards optimism.

TradeXYZ allows shorting. Anyone who believes Cerebras is overvalued can open a short position with margin, expressing their judgment with real capital. This two-way competition is a necessary condition for price equilibrium. The tug-of-war between bulls and bears makes it harder for the price to be dominated by a single sentiment.

Most importantly, Forge Price updates once a day; it's the output of an algorithmic model, not a real-time market transaction. Hiive's transactions are discrete; days might pass between trades. During the roadshow, underwriters release price signals to the market every few days, each time selectively disclosing information.

TradeXYZ is a continuously operating matching market, updating prices every 3 seconds. For example, news of Sam Altman appearing in a roadshow video, a leaked rumor that Arm and SoftBank tried to acquire Cerebras, or news that the order book oversubscription multiple went from 10x to 20x—the price moves immediately.

The Pre-IPO craze this year is just beginning.

Cerebras is only the first. Later this year, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are all preparing to go public. This will be the largest batch of tech IPOs in human history, with total fundraising potentially exceeding hundreds of billions of dollars.

And this means that Hyperliquid and TradeXYZ will continue to upend Wall Street's understanding and gain more pricing power.