Cerebras IPO makes billions for Benchmark but VC Eric Vishria almost didn't take the meeting | TechCrunch

"Benchmark is famously selective in the companies it chooses, and backs hardware companies so rarely that Vishria was kicking himself for giving time to Cerebras. "Why did I take this meeting?" he kept muttering. At one point, he even messaged his assistant, who manages his calendar, and bugged her: "Why did you let me take this meeting?" Vishria recalls."

""It was five founders and a deck, and it was our first hardware investment in 10 years," Vishria told TechCrunch about that first meeting. "I had been a venture capitalist for like, 18 months." (Prior to being a VC, Vishria sold the social browser startup he co-founded, RockMelt, to Yahoo for a reported $60-$70 million in 2013.)"

"But his grumpy attitude vanished by the third slide, as co-founder and CEO Andrew Feldman laid out Cerebras' grand plans. "The first deck is the title slide. The second deck is the team. And I was like, 'Oh, that team is really good.' And the third slide is something along the lines of 'GPUs actually suck for deep learning. They just happen to be 100 times better than CPUs.' And as soon as he said it, a light bulb went off," Vishria recalled."

""I was like, 'Oh, my God, of course. Like, why would a graphics processor be the right thing for AI?'" Still, this was years before Google's famous Transformer paper - the 2017 research that laid the groundwork for modern AI - which eventually led to ChatGPT. Cerebras was pitchi"

Cerebras Systems’ IPO generated billions for the company, its founders, and major investors. Benchmark, holding 9.5%, benefited significantly, with general partner Eric Vishria serving on the board since 2016 and co-leading the $25 million Series A round. Vishria initially questioned why he agreed to the meeting, describing it as five founders and a deck and noting it was Benchmark’s first hardware investment in a decade. He was skeptical and even complained to his assistant about scheduling the meeting. His attitude changed after Andrew Feldman presented the team and argued that GPUs are better suited for deep learning than CPUs, triggering Vishria’s realization about using graphics processors for AI. The company’s approach preceded later influential research that helped enable modern AI systems.

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