“NVIDIA-Konkurrent: Cerebras IPO” - Iran, Alu-Wette Century, Bau-Wette Stantec

The episode opens with geopolitical context: Iran-US nuclear talks briefly sent oil prices down 10% and equity markets up on Friday, but over the weekend Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz again pending a US blockade lift, and the Israel-Lebanon weapons standoff also reportedly reignited, leaving the situation highly uncertain.

On the AI front, Anthropic launched 'Claude Design,' a tool directly competing with Figma, which caused Figma's stock to drop ~8%. Anthropic's founder also visited the White House despite prior tensions with the current administration, as the new Claude model was considered powerful enough for government access.

The main AI story is Cerebras's upcoming IPO. The company produces wafer-scale chips — essentially turning an entire silicon wafer into one giant chip — to maximize compute performance. They generated ~$500M in revenue last year and hold $25B in orders. However, 86% of current revenue comes from just two Abu Dhabi customers (G42 and Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI). Two major deals could shift this: one with Amazon AWS and a much larger one with OpenAI, where OpenAI commits to buying $20B in Cerebras chips (40x current annual revenue) and receives options for ~10% of shares. This means ~80% of near-term orders would still come from a single customer. Additionally, Cerebras has exclusivity clauses preventing it from selling to certain OpenAI competitors, possibly including Anthropic. The expected IPO valuation is ~$35B, roughly 70x revenue.

A notable biotech IPO also occurred: Kylera Therapeutics, a weight-loss injection company, raised $625M at a ~$2B valuation — the largest biotech IPO ever by proceeds raised. The stock jumped 60% on debut. The underlying drug was originally developed by Chinese company Hengrui, highlighting China's growing role in pharmaceutical R&D. Investors may also be speculating on a takeover, given that a comparable company (Cero Therapeutics) was acquired by Pfizer for $10B months after its ~$2B IPO.

Other quick news items: Airbnb plans to list hotels to drive growth, potentially sparking a fee war with Booking.com; Uber bought 5% of Delivery Hero (now holding ~7%), sending Delivery Hero's stock up ~10%; French train builder Alstom fell 30% after its new CEO guided for lower margins and reduced order expectations, citing slow project execution and customers holding back orders due to the Iran conflict.

The Century Aluminum segment focuses on the US aluminum smelting industry. Middle East conflict has damaged smelting plants in the region, pushing aluminum prices up ~20% to over $3,500/ton. Trump's 50% aluminum tariff further benefits domestic producers. With only 4 smelters remaining in the US (down from 20+ in 2000), Century Aluminum is building the first new US smelter in ~50 years, a $4B+ project with a UAE partner. Century holds a 40% stake. If fully operational, it could produce 750,000 tons/year, doubling total US smelting capacity. At conservative assumptions (10% interest rate drop, aluminum at $2,700/ton), Century's 40% share could add $800M+ in revenue, representing ~30% growth by 2029. Century trades at a KGV (P/E) of ~6.5 versus Alcoa at ~12, reflecting investor skepticism about cycle sustainability. Glencore, which holds ~1/3 of Century's shares and both supplies raw materials and buys half of finished goods, provides some stability but also creates dependency.

The final segment covers Stantec, a Canadian engineering consultancy founded in 1954 in Edmonton, now with 34,000 employees and ~$5B in revenue. It plans infrastructure like water networks, bridges, subway tunnels, and data centers. Growth drivers include Canada's $37B infrastructure package, Germany's €500B infrastructure program (Stantec acquired Zetcon Engineering in Bochum in 2024, involved in the Karlsruhe city rail tunnel, A6 motorway expansion, and the 700km Südlink power cable), and massive data center demand (Stantec has designed over 5GW of data center capacity in 8 years). A current mega-project starts at 300–350MW and is scalable to 1GW. Stantec expects 10% revenue growth in 2025 with improving margins, has an order backlog of ~$6B, and trades at ~20x earnings — comparable to competitor WSP, and at a premium to Jacobs and AECOM. Stantec's stock is up ~120% over five years, outperforming all peers.