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CBRS · Forward model · Cloud and other services · Bear case

What has to happen in Cloud and other services

Model as of

This page changes Cloud and other services inside the complete CBRS model. Every other vertical, corporate programme and valuation assumption stays in the selected portfolio case.

CBRS forward model
Horizon
Consolidated fair value $56.62 all other verticals held in this portfolio case
Final-quarter revenue $1.16B 95% of company revenue
Explicit segment contribution −$486M EBITDA less segment capex, before corporate items

The build lands and the revenue does not follow on schedule. The June quarter is the existence proof: $416.9M of capex against $180.1M of revenue, a 14.2% GAAP gross margin and cloud cost of revenue up 313% year over year against cloud revenue up 281%. The contractual asymmetry makes a slow quarter worse than a slow quarter. If Cerebras misses a capacity tranche or a service level, OpenAI can terminate part or all of the MRA, and the $25.4bn of remaining performance obligations is that agreement; termination also puts the $1.0bn Working Capital Loan on demand. With 76% of revenue in three customers this is a single-counterparty event, not a diversified miss. Here the 2027 tripling does not happen, the margin glide stalls near today's core level and the multiple compresses to the 3.0x carried by the leased build-out comparable.

Cloud and other services

Basis quarter$126M
Final quarter$1.16B
Implied CAGR+64%
Final revenue mix95%

The inference service, and now the company. Cerebras contracts multi-year datacentre capacity, leases and fits out the sites, installs its own systems and recognises revenue over time as capacity is delivered and consumed: $125.6M of the quarter's $126.0M was over-time revenue. The line grew 281% year over year on GAAP and is 70% of consolidated revenue. Economically this is a capacity business, but live megawatts, revenue per megawatt and utilisation are all undisclosed - the only capacity figure given is a combined 'more than 600 megawatts of data center capacity that is either live now or will be delivered by the end of 2027' - so it is driven as a growth line anchored to the disclosed $25.4bn RPO recognition schedule rather than on an invented earning base.

Last four quarters
2025 Q3 $39M Reported
2025 Q4 $50M Reported
2026 Q1 $83M Estimated
2026 Q2 $126M Reported
Contracted inference capacity (OpenAI MRA and other capacity agreements)On-demand and enterprise inferenceDatacentre pass-through billings (zero-margin, excluded from core revenue)
Sequential growth +55.0%/qtr decaying toward +2.5% 55% a quarter: the rate that lands FY2027 near the guided tripling of the FY2026 core base of $880-890M.
Cloud and other services

Latest: $1.16B (2030Q4E)

Period Value
2024Q1 $17M
2024Q2 $15M
2024Q3 $22M
2024Q4 $24M
2025Q1 $30M
2025Q2 $33M
2025Q3 $39M
2025Q4 $50M
2026Q1 $83M
2026Q2 $126M
2026Q3E $189M
2026Q4E $266M
2027Q1E $354M
2027Q2E $448M
2027Q3E $543M
2027Q4E $637M
2028Q1E $725M
2028Q2E $805M
2028Q3E $876M
2028Q4E $938M
2029Q1E $991M
2029Q2E $1.03B
2029Q3E $1.07B
2029Q4E $1.10B
2030Q1E $1.12B
2030Q2E $1.14B
2030Q3E $1.15B
2030Q4E $1.16B

Assumptions & reasoning

  • Cost of revenue on this line went from $24.6M to $101.4M year over year while revenue went from $33.0M to $126.0M. The cost curve is tracking capacity rather than consumption, which is what a build-ahead looks like.
  • $14.5M of the quarter's revenue is zero-margin datacentre pass-through billed on behalf of specific customers. It is excluded from core revenue and it is why the GAAP cloud gross margin reads 19.5% against a core cloud gross margin of 41.8%.
  • The segment margin starts at the 41.8% core cloud gross margin rather than the 19.5% GAAP figure, and glides toward 62% - just above the 60%-plus core gross margin target the CFO stated on the call, which is a target for the consolidated company and not guidance.
  • Capex intensity starts at 180% of this line's revenue. Trailing-twelve-month capex of $746.5M was 251% of trailing cloud revenue and the June quarter alone spent $416.9M, so 180% is already a step down from the current build rate.
  • $1.5bn of undiscounted future minimum lease payments on datacentre leases executed in the June quarter had not commenced at 2026-06-30 and sit off the balance sheet. They will land in cost of revenue as the capacity goes live, which is more cost arriving before its revenue.
  • No seasonality array is set. Removing the trend with a centred four-quarter moving average does not shrink the Q4 factor, it inverts it, from a naive 1.273 to a detrended 0.879, and the window-to-window spread of 0.172 exceeds the signal of 0.121.
  • The $25.4bn RPO is consolidated, includes variable pass-through consideration and cannot be split between the two lines, so it is used to shape this driver's decay and to anchor the Bull case, never as a cloud-only backlog.
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