Nscale, the London-based AI cloud infrastructure company, has closed $3.36 billion in pre-IPO convertible financing led by Third Point, giving it fresh capital to build out data centers as it prepares for a planned listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
Of the total, $2.36 billion was funded at closing on Sept. 25, with an additional $1 billion commitment from Nvidia expected to arrive in mid-November, according to details of the financing round. Other participants included Apollo funds, Citadel, Hudson Bay Capital, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council and Wellington Management, among others, with Goldman Sachs acting as placement agent. The notes convert automatically into ordinary shares once Nscale completes its IPO; Nvidia's stake will convert into non-voting shares, continuing the chipmaker's pattern of taking financial positions in major customers without board influence.
A Contract Book Built on One Giant Deal
Nscale, founded two years ago, builds what it calls a vertically integrated AI cloud platform, running everything from behind-the-meter power plants to liquid-cooled data centers and GPU clusters. The company filed for a U.S. listing on Sept. 18 and is telling investors its total contracted revenue now stands at roughly $103 billion. Most of that figure is owed to a single customer: a six-year, $45 billion agreement signed in late August with Anthropic, under which Nscale will supply 460 megawatts of computing capacity from a new West Virginia data-center campus expected online by the end of 2027.
The Anthropic contract followed reported interest from other large cloud customers that ultimately did not convert into deals of similar scale, underscoring both the opportunity and the concentration risk in Nscale's pitch to public-market investors: a contract book dominated by one counterparty, however creditworthy, is a different proposition from a diversified customer base.
"This marks a milestone for Nscale as we continue scaling our full-stack AI infrastructure to meet unprecedented global demand."
Josh Payne, Chief Executive, Nscale
Nscale's board includes former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg and former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, a lineup that gives the pre-IPO company unusual political and governance heft for its size. No date has been set for the listing, and the company cautions that the size of the offering and its investor base could still change before any final decision.
