Nscale, a British AI infrastructure company founded two years ago, is in talks to raise $3.5 billion before going public as early as September, according to people familiar with the matter.
The funding package splits into two components: $1.5 billion in convertible notes and $2 billion directly from Nvidia, which previously led the company's Series B round in March. That Series B raised $1.1 billion from investor Aker, which Nscale claimed was the largest funding round in European history.
Nscale has informed potential investors that it holds approximately $103 billion in committed revenue—a figure derived from signed customer leases rather than current sales. The bulk comes from a recently signed agreement with Anthropic valued at approximately $45 billion, representing a multi-year compute commitment.
The distinction matters for valuation. Nscale is packaging future customer commitments as a revenue runway that justifies pre-IPO capital raises at an inflated valuation. This playbook—converting long-term contracts into present-day capital claims—has become standard in the AI infrastructure space, where the bet is that no shortage of generative AI demand exists.
Nvidia's continued participation signals confidence in Nscale's ability to deploy capital efficiently and win contracts against rivals like CoreWeave and Lambda Labs. For Nvidia, the loan doubles down on its strategy of financing the infrastructure layers downstream, ensuring GPU attach across a fragmented stack.
The company completed its Series A in December 2024, raising $155 million. The pace of capital raises—$155 million to $1.1 billion to $3.5 billion in less than nine months—reflects the sector's assumption that capital is abundant and that customers will pay premium rates for scarce compute capacity.
