Cerebras vs Together AI

By valuation, Cerebras is the larger company at $8.1B versus $3.3B — a 2.5x difference. Size can also be measured by team: Cerebras employs 400 people while Together AI has 100 employees.

Cerebras has raised more in total funding at $1.8B, compared to Together AI's $533.5M — a gap of $1.3B. Combined, the two companies have completed 10 known funding rounds.

Cerebras leads with an Awaira Score of 79/100, while Together AI sits at 77/100. That 2-point gap reflects real differences in funding, scale, and traction — it's not a vanity metric.

Cerebras was founded by Andrew Feldman in 2016. Together AI was founded by Ce Zhang in 2022. Visit each company's profile on Awaira for a full founder biography.

Cerebras: Cerebras Systems designs and manufactures specialized processors for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. Founded in 2016, the company develops custom silicon chips optimized for training and inference of large language models and deep learning workloads. Its flagship product, the Cerebras Wafer Scale Engine (WSE), is one of the largest computer chips ever built, integrating hundreds of billions of transistors on a single wafer to deliver high compute density and memory bandwidth for AI workloads. The WSE architecture prioritizes parallel processing capabilities and reduced latency for neural network training, distinguishing it from traditional GPU-based approaches used by competitors like NVIDIA. Cerebras addresses the infrastructure layer of AI computing, targeting organizations training large-scale models. The company has secured substantial venture funding, indicating strong investor confidence in custom AI chip development. Cerebras has been pursuing an IPO and has attracted investment from firms including Tiger Global, Benchmark, and Altimeter Capital. Its competitive positioning centers on delivering superior compute efficiency and performance-per-watt compared to conventional accelerators. The company targets both cloud service providers and enterprises with significant AI computing requirements. Cerebras represents the emerging wave of AI-specific chip designers competing in the rapidly expanding AI infrastructure market, though adoption remains limited compared to established GPU manufacturers. Cerebras builds wafer-scale processors specifically engineered for large language model training, offering an alternative architecture to traditional GPU-based AI computing infrastructure. Together AI: Together AI is an AI infrastructure company founded in 2022 that provides cloud-based platforms for training, fine-tuning, and deploying large language models. The company operates a managed inference service and model hosting platform that enables developers and enterprises to run open-source and proprietary models at scale. Together AI's core offering allows customers to access GPU compute resources specifically optimized for LLM workloads without building infrastructure in-house. The company positions itself in the competitive inference and model deployment segment, competing with services like Replicate, Modal, and cloud providers' native ML offerings. Together AI emphasizes open-source model support and cost-efficient inference through optimized serving techniques. The platform supports popular models including Llama, Mistral, and other community-developed architectures. With $228 million in total funding and a $1.3 billion valuation as of its Series B stage, Together AI has secured substantial capital to expand its infrastructure and product capabilities. The company serves use cases spanning application development, research, and enterprise deployment scenarios. Its growth trajectory reflects increased demand for accessible LLM infrastructure alternatives to proprietary API providers, though the market remains highly competitive with low switching costs and commoditizing pricing dynamics. Together AI addresses the infrastructure gap for organizations seeking open-source LLM deployment alternatives to closed commercial APIs.

Cerebras got there first, launching in 2016 — that's 6 years of extra runway. Together AI didn't arrive until 2022. In AI, that kind of head start means more training data, deeper customer relationships, and a bigger talent moat.

Cerebras has about 400 employees; Together AI has about 100. A bigger team usually means more revenue or heavier VC backing, but in AI, small teams can build at massive scale.

Yes — they're direct rivals. Both Cerebras and Together AI compete in AI Infrastructure, targeting many of the same buyers. If you're evaluating one, you should be looking at the other.