Anthropic is in discussions with Nscale, a U.K. infrastructure provider backed by Nvidia, for a second computing capacity lease agreement valued at approximately $45 billion. The deal would involve a 460-megawatt data center in West Virginia, expanding an earlier agreement between the two companies at the same site.
Nscale specializes in building or leasing data centers and selling computing capacity to large-scale cloud providers and AI labs. Anthropic has said this year that demand for its Claude models has strained existing infrastructure, prompting the company to announce multiple partnerships to expand compute. Those agreements include deals with Advanced Micro Devices, SpaceX, Google and Broadcom.
Nscale filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange in September but has faced operational headwinds. The Telegraph reported Sunday that Microsoft withdrew from an agreement to anchor an Nscale data center outside London due to delays in connecting the facility to the country's power grid.
An Nscale spokesperson said the company remains committed to the London project and is exploring alternative power sources. "Our relationship with Microsoft remains strong and long-term, and this unfortunate London-wide grid issue has no impact on our other contracts," the spokesperson said.
The broader AI infrastructure market is showing signs of investor caution. Nscale rivals CoreWeave and Nebius have seen their shares decline 28 percent and 27 percent respectively over the past month, with losses attributed to concerns about heavy borrowing levels in the sector.
