AI chip company Cerebras Systems (CBRS) IPO heat is rising. Not only has it drawn market attention to this wafer-scale AI chip company challenging NVIDIA, but some investors have also begun looking for “Cerebras theme stocks” and upstream supply-chain beneficiaries. Investment KOL Joe said on X recently that he believes Vicor (VICR) could play a similar role, becoming an indirect bet on Cerebras growth.
Joe: From AAOI bets on Anthropic to using VICR to bet on Cerebras
Cerebras has recently been driven by strong IPO demand. It plans to raise its offering price range from $115 to $125 per share to $150 to $160, and increase the number of shares offered from 28 million to 30 million. If priced at the top end of the range, the fundraise size could reach about $4.8 billion. Earlier reports said Cerebras IPO order demand exceeded the available shares by more than 20 times. Pricing is expected on May 13, and the stock ticker is CBRS.
(AI chip demand is hot; Cerebras IPO sees oversubscription of more than 20x)
Joe’s core point is that the market has previously underestimated the flexibility of certain smaller players in the “AI infrastructure supply chain.” He said that before AAOI surged about 300%, he had argued on X that AAOI could participate in the upside tied to Anthropic. Now, he believes Vicor could also become a repriced target under the Cerebras theme.
His logic is that Cerebras’ wafer-scale engine (Wafer Scale Engine, WSE) requires extremely high power density and a specialized power-delivery architecture, and Vicor’s vertical power delivery (Vertical Power Delivery, VPD) is one of the key technologies in the Cerebras product architecture.
Vicor’s official materials have also explained that the WSE of Cerebras can be rated at up to 15kW—about one order of magnitude higher than traditional processors. Therefore, it needs a high-end power-delivery architecture that can evenly distribute power across the entire wafer under extremely high current. In related technical articles, Vicor also explicitly mentioned how its technology helps Cerebras improve processing capability.
Why Vicor? Cerebras’ wafer-scale chips need “different power supplies”
Unlike most AI chip companies, Cerebras’ core selling point isn’t making a single GPU or ASIC more powerful. Instead, it integrates an entire wafer into a single computing engine. This allows Cerebras to reduce latency and data-movement costs in traditional multi-chip systems, but it also brings extremely challenging requirements for power delivery and cooling.
From Joe’s perspective, this is where Vicor’s investment narrative lies: if Cerebras’ WSE architecture is adopted by more cloud customers, then as a provider of vertical power-delivery solutions, Vicor could benefit from increased Cerebras shipments and the scale of system deployments.
This kind of investment logic is similar to the “shovel-seller” narrative seen in past AI server supply chains. The market may not only buy the final chip company itself; it also chases key component suppliers such as optical communications, power supplies, cooling, advanced packaging, PCB, and server ODMs. AAOI is viewed by the market as one of the AI optical communications and Anthropic-related themes, while Joe now places VICR into the Cerebras supply-chain theme.
Vicor capacity becomes a focus of market re-rating: first fab could reach $1.5 billion in annualized capacity by year-end
Joe further noted that if Vicor’s first factory in Andover, Massachusetts approaches maximum capacity by year-end, annualized capacity could be $1.5 billion. He also cited Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR) for comparison, saying he believes MPWR’s revenue scale next year is about $3.5 billion, but its market cap is more than ten times Vicor’s. This suggests that if Vicor can prove its first fab is running at full capacity, the market might re-evaluate its valuation.
Joe’s other key point is Vicor’s second-generation VPD technology. He said that recently a “large hyperscaler” and AI chip OEMs have tested Vicor’s second-generation VPD, which is also one of the reasons the company is expanding Andover capacity.
However, this portion still remains KOL speculation and a market theme for now. It cannot be regarded as the company’s officially confirmed customer list or design-in results.
Patents and royalties: another power-supply narrative for Vicor
In addition to product sales, Joe also emphasized Vicor’s patent and royalty income. He said that after Vicor successfully defended its intellectual property last year, it already has about $90 million in annualized royalty revenue. In the next one to two years, it could have the opportunity to move beyond $180 million, and the company still has a second ITC case, involving large companies including Delta and MPWR.
Vicor is indeed actively pursuing patent litigation related to power modules. In February 2026, the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) announced that based on a complaint filed by Vicor in January, it will launch a Section 337 investigation into certain power converter devices, circuit board components, and computing systems containing related products.
Bloomberg Law previously reported that Vicor filed patent infringement lawsuits against competitors including Luxshare, Delta Electronics, Monolithic Power Systems, and Wistron. The disputes involve power module and circuit board products.
This adds another layer to Vicor’s “AI power IP licensing” narrative. If the market believes Vicor’s core power-delivery architecture is irreplaceable, and that patent barriers can be converted into high-margin royalties, Vicor would not just be a hardware component supplier—it could also be compared by investors to an IP platform company in the AI power domain.
Founder ownership and founder-led narrative: Joe values Vicor’s governance structure
Joe also specifically mentioned the holdings of Vicor founder and CEO Patrizio Vinciarelli. He believes Vicor is one of the few profitable semiconductor companies listed in the U.S. where the founder still holds a very high proportion of equity. For him, this indicates strong alignment between management and shareholders’ interests, and gives Vicor valuation premium potential as a “founder-led company.”
This kind of narrative is not uncommon in the U.S. stock market. From NVIDIA and Tesla to multiple software and semiconductor companies, founder-led leadership is often seen by bulls as a plus for long-term execution, product vision, and capital-allocation discipline. For Vicor, however, the market will ultimately come back to three verifiable questions: first, whether Cerebras—or other AI customers—can continue to ramp volumes; second, whether Vicor’s production capacity can ramp smoothly; and third, whether patent-licensing revenue can truly expand.
This article, Cerebras IPO boosts supply-chain beneficiaries: Vicor’s power-supply narrative and AI power IP licensing theme, first appeared on 链新闻 ABMedia.
