Cerebras — a pioneering AI hardware company building one of the fastest inference platforms in the world — needed LinkedIn Ads to do something specific: start real conversations with technical decision-makers at AI startups, without burning budget on the wrong audiences.
The unlock wasn’t a louder pitch. It was the right offer in front of the right buyer — backed by clean CRM data and ICP discipline that cut waste before it could compound.
Reach the right buyers — without paying enterprise prices for the wrong ones.
Reach AI startup decision-makers.
Cerebras needed to land in front of CTOs, engineers, and AI leads at startups actively building on inference — a narrow, technical audience that LinkedIn surface-level targeting tends to miss.
Drive awareness and adoption of the inference platform.
The campaign had to do more than collect names. It needed to introduce Cerebras’ inference platform to the right buyers and create real interest in trying it.
Generate qualified B2B leads without runaway spend.
LinkedIn rewards specificity. Without disciplined targeting and a relevant hook, costs balloon fast and lead quality drops. Cerebras needed both: efficient cost-per-lead and conversations that mattered.
Three moves. One clean signal.
Tracked what matters.
We connected Cerebras’ HubSpot CRM with LinkedIn Ads, mapping leads directly into their system. The team got clear visibility into every lead generated, and no opportunity slipped through the cracks between platform and pipeline.
Implemented best practices with the right offer.
We launched LinkedIn Message Ads offering free inference credits through Cerebras’ startup program. The hook was high-value, relevant, and specific to the audience — exactly the kind of incentive technical founders and engineers actually respond to.
Message Ads only work when the offer is good enough to earn the inbox. Free inference credits aren’t a lead magnet — they’re a real tool the audience wanted to use.
Dialed in ICP — eliminating ad waste.
Rather than guessing at the ideal audience, we used LinkedIn’s demographic reporting to see exactly which industries, job titles, and seniority levels were engaging. From there, we excluded irrelevant segments and doubled down on the profiles that matched Cerebras’ true buyers — technical decision-makers at AI startups.
Cost-efficient lead flow that started enterprise-level conversations.
On LinkedIn, the offer and the ICP carry the campaign.
Message Ads work when paired with the right offer. Here, free inference credits gave technical founders a reason to engage that a generic demo request never would have.
Prioritizing ICP quality over lead volume is what turned ad performance into real sales opportunities. Fewer wrong leads, more right ones — that’s the move.
With the right strategy, LinkedIn Ads can outperform cost benchmarks while driving the kind of enterprise-level conversations that actually move a B2B pipeline.
This is what the Lead Quality Framework looks like on LinkedIn. Better offer. Better ICP. Better conversations.