AI "neocloud" operator Nscale (NSCL.US) races toward U.S. IPO, seeking to raise up to $3 billion; Anthropic splashes $45 billion to lock in computing power.

Artificial intelligence data center developer Nscale has submitted an initial public offering (IPO) application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), planning to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "NSCL." According to prior reports, the company is seeking to raise up to approximately $3 billion through this IPO, with proceeds to be used to fund data center equipment investment to meet the AI industry's continuously growing computing power demand. Headquartered in London, Nscale is one of the "neocloud" operators that have risen rapidly amid the recent AI infrastructure boom, primarily renting out computing resources to enterprises developing AI models and applications. The company's partners include NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) and Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US), and it has signed large-scale computing power agreements with AI companies such as Anthropic. However, Nscale's rapid expansion has come alongside massive losses. According to a filing submitted to the SEC on Friday, for the six months ended June 30, Nscale generated revenue of $140.6 million, an increase of more than 12-fold from $10.4 million in the same period a year earlier; net loss during the same period widened from $368.9 million to $1.02 billion. Nscale was spun out of a cryptocurrency mining business in early 2024 and has since rapidly transformed into an AI data center operator. Unlike traditional hyperscale cloud service providers such as Amazon.com, Inc. AWS, Microsoft Corporation Azure, and Alphabet Inc. Class C cloud, Nscale belongs to the "neocloud" operators that have emerged rapidly in recent years, primarily building infrastructure around AI computing resources such as GPUs and then renting out computing power to large technology companies and AI model developers. In March of this year, Nscale completed a Series C funding round led by Norwegian industrial investment group Aker and investment firm 8090 Industries, reaching a valuation of approximately $14.6 billion. NVIDIA Corporation and Nokia Oyj Sponsored ADR also participated in the round. The company's pursuit of up to $3 billion in IPO financing means it may further leverage public capital markets to fund its rapidly expanding data center and GPU infrastructure. One of the core advantages behind Nscale's rapid expansion is large-scale power and data center resources. As of August 2026, the power resources owned or controlled by the company's data centers had exceeded 10 gigawatts (GW), with a total contract value of approximately $103 billion. The so-called "hyperscale AIHub Group, Inc. Class A" projects the company is building in Norway, Portugal, Texas, and West Virginia each have a power capacity of more than 200 megawatts (MW). Among them, the data center located in Narvik, Norway, has become an important project in Nscale's cooperation with Microsoft Corporation. In April of this year, the company agreed to add more than 30,000 NVIDIA Corporation chips on top of its existing Microsoft Corporation computing power leasing agreement, further expanding AI computing capacity. Nscale's business model requires substantial upfront investment to procure GPUs, build data centers, and secure sufficient power resources, while improving the predictability of future revenue through long-term computing power leasing contracts with large technology companies and AI enterprises. One of the company's most notable customer agreements currently comes from Anthropic. Anthropic said in August of this year that it had agreed to spend $45 billion to lease AI cloud computing capacity from Nscale's flagship project in West Virginia, the Monarch Compute Campus. The Monarch campus covers approximately 2,250 acres. According to Nscale's filing, the project is expected to have approximately 2 GW of total power capacity in operation by the first half of 2028, and plans to further expand to approximately 8 GW by 2031. If this plan proceeds smoothly, Monarch will become one of the important infrastructure assets for Nscale's future computing power expansion. At the same time, in July of this year, Nscale also agreed to acquire San Francisco-based AI software startup Anyscale for $1.65 billion, hoping to use software capabilities to help customers use AI computing resources more efficiently. This also means the company is extending from simply providing data centers and GPU computing power further into the AI infrastructure software layer. The close relationship between Nscale and NVIDIA Corporation is an important foundation for the company's rapid expansion of AI computing power supply capacity, but the company also listed this dependence as a risk factor in its IPO filing. The company said it relies on NVIDIA Corporation for GPU supply. During its Series B funding round in 2025, Nscale issued warrants to NVIDIA Corporation, making the AI chip giant a shareholder with more than 5% ownership. If NVIDIA Corporation exercises the relevant warrants in the future, it will receive non-voting shares of Nscale. The capital ties between the two parties have continued to deepen recently. According to the IPO filing, as part of a subscription agreement, Nscale agreed on September 15 to provide investors with $2.1 billion in unsecured convertible loan notes, while also providing NVIDIA Corporation with up to $1 billion in unsecured convertible loan notes or non-voting shares, with the NVIDIA Corporation-related transaction expected to close on November 16. For Nscale, establishing close capital and supply relationships with NVIDIA Corporation helps secure the most critical GPU resources for AI infrastructure construction; on the other hand, if GPU supply, procurement terms, or the cooperative relationship between the two parties change, it could also affect the company's expansion plans. Despite rapid revenue growth, Nscale is still in a phase of large-scale capital investment. In the six months ended June 30 of this year, the company's revenue surged from $10.4 million in the same period a year earlier to $140.6 million, but its net loss also widened from $368.9 million to $1.02 billion. Behind the simultaneous rapid expansion of revenue and losses is the typical asset-heavy expansion model of AI data centers. GPU procurement, power infrastructure, land, data center construction, and cooling systems all require enormous upfront capital investment, while revenue is gradually realized as computing power comes online and customer contracts are executed. For Nscale, which is preparing to enter the public market, investors may focus not only on its contract scale of more than $100 billion, but also on how quickly these contracts ultimately convert into revenue and cash flow, and how much capital the company needs to invest to fulfill the related orders. In addition, Nscale's board lineup is also quite notable, including former Meta Platforms (META.US) Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, as well as former Meta President of Global Affairs and former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. The company's IPO filing shows that Aker, Sandton Capital Partners, and a trust institution associated with Nscale founder and CEO Josh Payne each hold at least 5% of the company's shares. Nscale's choice to list at this time also coincides with AI infrastructure concepts becoming an important driving force in the global IPO market. Data shows that IPO fundraising so far this year has reached approximately $161.4 billion, the highest level since 2021, with companies offering investors exposure to AI infrastructure investment becoming an important driving force. This year, SpaceX raised $86.2 billion through a record-breaking IPO, with its sale of AI computing capacity to companies including Anthropic becoming an important part of its listing story; South Korean memory chip manufacturer SK Hynix's $26.5 billion listing also highlighted data center demand. Brookfield-backed data center company Csquare raised $1.2 billion through an IPO in July. Nscale's listing is being led by Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS.US), JPMorgan (JPM.US), and Morgan Stanley (MS.US), with 19 additional banks participating as underwriters.