Nscale
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Last reviewed
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Nscale is a British AI infrastructure company, usually described as a neocloud, that builds GPU-dense data center capacity and rents large-scale compute to hyperscalers, AI labs, and governments. Headquartered in London, it was incorporated on 29 May 2024 as a spinout from Arkon Energy, a cryptocurrency mining and renewable-powered data center group, and is led by co-founder and chief executive Josh Payne. In under two years Nscale went from a standing start to a reported $14.6 billion valuation, raising what the company and outside reporters described as the largest Series B and the largest Series C in European venture history. The growth was driven by multibillion-dollar capacity contracts with Microsoft and by participation in OpenAI's Stargate program. Its backers include Nvidia, Norway's Aker ASA, Dell, and Nokia. Nscale's rise has also drawn skepticism about whether a young, debt-funded company so dependent on a few customers and on Nvidia's own financing can sustain the valuations attached to it.
Nscale grew out of Arkon Energy, a company Payne founded with Nathan Townsend that mined cryptocurrency using cheap, often stranded, renewable electricity. Payne's thesis was that he could buy power that had no other buyer and convert it into Bitcoin. In December 2023 Arkon raised $110 million in what was billed as the largest private funding round for a bitcoin mining platform that year, according to Computer Weekly. An attempted reverse-merger listing on Euronext Amsterdam was terminated in November 2024.
The crypto downturn coincided with the launch of ChatGPT, and Payne concluded that AI compute was far more valuable than mining. Both workloads need the same basic ingredients: cheap power and buildings full of advanced chips. Nscale was carved out as a separate AI-focused business and launched from stealth in May 2024. Townsend, who co-founded both companies, stepped down as a director of Nscale on 8 October 2025 per a Companies House filing, while remaining chief operating officer of Arkon; investment banker Barry Kupferberg left the board the same day. Oyvind Eriksen, president and CEO of Aker ASA, joined Nscale's board after Aker led its Series B.
A neocloud is a company that builds or finances AI-ready data centers and rents the computing power to whoever needs it, from frontier model developers to national governments. Nscale describes itself as a "full stack sovereign AI infrastructure provider" and an AI hyperscaler, meaning it tries to own the whole stack: securing land and power, building the data centers, installing Nvidia AI chip clusters, and operating the cloud software and managed services on top. That vertical integration, plus access to very cheap renewable power, is the company's central pitch.
The model resembles that of larger US rivals such as CoreWeave, Nebius, Lambda, and Crusoe. Like them, Nscale buys enormous quantities of Nvidia accelerators and signs long-term offtake deals with a small number of large customers to underwrite the cost. It markets "sovereign" capacity, AI compute physically located in and controlled within a given country, to governments and regulated industries in the UK, the Nordics, and the rest of Europe. By April 2026 the company employed roughly 484 people, according to data provider Tracxn, and had opened an office in London's Mayfair district.
Nscale's fundraising escalated quickly. After a $30 million seed in December 2023 and a $155 million Series A in December 2024 led by Sandton Capital Partners, the company raised a $1.1 billion Series B that it and Reuters-tracked outlets called the largest in UK and European history. On 9 March 2026 it closed a $2 billion Series C at a $14.6 billion valuation, which CNBC reported was more than quadruple the roughly $3.1 billion valuation set at the Series B. Aker ASA led or co-led both of the large rounds. The Series C added three high-profile directors: former Meta chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, former UK deputy prime minister and Meta executive Nick Clegg, and former Yahoo president Susan Decker.
| Round | Date | Amount | Post-money valuation | Lead investor(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | December 2023 | $30 million | not disclosed | not disclosed |
| Series A | 9 December 2024 | $155 million | not disclosed | Sandton Capital Partners |
| Series B | 25 September 2025 | $1.1 billion | ~$3.1 billion | Aker ASA |
| Pre-Series C SAFE | 1 October 2025 | $433 million | not disclosed | not disclosed |
| Series C | 9 March 2026 | $2 billion | $14.6 billion | Aker ASA, 8090 Industries |
Investors across the rounds include Nvidia, Dell, Nokia, Blue Owl Managed Funds, Fidelity Management and Research Company, G Squared, Point72, T.Capital, Citadel, Jane Street, Lenovo, Linden Advisors, and Astra Capital Management. Counting equity and debt, Fortune put Nscale's total capital raised at close to $4 billion. Since the start of 2026 the company has also taken on a $1.4 billion GPU-backed loan and a $790 million financing facility tied to its Norway buildout, according to Fortune. Payne has said he wants to turn Nscale into a "$1 trillion hyperscaler" and has framed the company as building "the engine of superintelligence." Management has signaled a possible initial public offering in late 2026, with the listing venue, London or the United States, still undecided.
Nscale's order book is anchored by Microsoft. In September 2025 the Aker-Nscale joint venture behind Stargate Norway signed a binding five-year customer agreement with Microsoft valued at about $6.2 billion for capacity in Narvik. Weeks later, on 15 October 2025, Nscale announced a much larger agreement to contract approximately 200,000 Nvidia GB300 (Grace Blackwell Ultra) GPUs to Microsoft across four countries and two continents. Multiple outlets, including CNBC and TechCrunch, reported that deal at around $14 billion, though Nscale's own press release did not disclose a figure. The October contract spans roughly 104,000 GPUs in Texas, about 52,000 in Norway, about 23,000 in the UK (at Loughton), and about 12,600 in Portugal.
OpenAI was an early and prominent partner, but the relationship cooled in 2026. Nscale was named as initial offtaker for Stargate Norway in mid-2025 and, in September 2025, joined OpenAI and Nvidia on Stargate UK, which envisioned an initial 8,000 GPUs in early 2026 scaling toward 31,000. Both projects then stalled. In April 2026 OpenAI paused Stargate UK, citing high UK industrial energy prices and regulatory friction, and Google reportedly agreed to take the London capacity instead. Around the same time OpenAI pulled back from renting capacity directly at Stargate Norway, and Microsoft stepped in, agreeing to rent about 30,000 of Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chips from Nscale at the Narvik campus. The reshuffling left Nscale's Norwegian and British sites with customers, but it underscored how exposed a neocloud is to the spending decisions of a handful of buyers.
| Counterparty | Announced | Reported value | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft (Aker-Nscale JV) | September 2025 | ~$6.2 billion | 5-year capacity agreement at Narvik, Norway |
| Microsoft | 15 October 2025 | ~$14 billion (press reports) | ~200,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs across Texas, Norway, UK, Portugal |
| OpenAI (Stargate Norway) | July to August 2025 | ~$1 billion initial phase | initial offtaker; OpenAI withdrew April 2026 |
| OpenAI (Stargate UK) | September 2025 | not disclosed | 8,000 GPUs scaling to 31,000; paused April 2026 |
| Microsoft (Narvik, post-OpenAI) | April 2026 | not disclosed | ~30,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs |
| Microsoft / Start Campus, Portugal | 2026 | EUR 695 million (Nscale investment) | 66,000 Nvidia Rubin GPUs from late 2027 |
Nscale's strategy starts with power, and its flagship sites sit in Norway. The Glomfjord data center, in Ornes just above the Arctic Circle, runs on 100 percent hydroelectric power and currently delivers about 30 MW, expandable to 60 MW, using the cold local climate for efficient cooling. Time reported that Nscale secured Norwegian electricity at roughly 3 to 4 US cents per unit, well below the European average near 10 cents. The much larger Stargate Norway project, a 50/50 joint venture with Aker at Kvandal near Narvik, is planned for 230 MW of initial capacity with ambitions to add 290 MW more, targeting about 100,000 GPUs. The partners committed around $1 billion to the initial phase. Both Norwegian sites are powered by hydropower.
In the United Kingdom, Nscale is building at Loughton in Essex, a 50 MW facility expandable to 90 MW that has been pitched as the country's largest AI supercomputer project and is expected online by late 2026. The company has talked about a roughly $2.5 billion UK investment over three years and additional "AI Growth Zone" capacity, including a site at Cobalt Park in the North East tied to the Stargate UK plan.
In the United States, the Microsoft contract centers on a Texas campus of about 240 MW, leased from Ionic Digital and slated to host roughly 104,000 GB300 GPUs, with options to scale toward 1.2 GW over time. In Portugal, Nscale committed EUR 695 million (about $812 million) to expand the Start Campus site at Sines, where it plans to deploy 66,000 Nvidia Rubin GPUs from late 2027 under an arrangement in which Microsoft handles software and customer relationships. Across these regions the company has described a development pipeline that grew from about 300 MW at launch toward more than 1 GW.
Nscale matters because it is the clearest European entrant in the global race to build AI compute, a field otherwise dominated by US neoclouds and the big cloud providers. Its model bundles three scarce things, cheap renewable power, Nvidia silicon, and long-term hyperscaler demand, and packages them as sovereign capacity for European customers and governments. If the company executes, it would give Europe a homegrown supplier of frontier-scale AI infrastructure.
The risks are equally clear, and several were sharpened in 2026. Concentration is the biggest: Microsoft accounts for the large majority of Nscale's contracted revenue, so the loss or renegotiation of that relationship would be severe. The OpenAI pullbacks from Stargate UK and Stargate Norway showed how quickly an anchor offtaker can change plans. The financing is also entangled with Nvidia, the same supplier whose chips Nscale buys: Data Center Dynamics reported that Nvidia agreed to guarantee up to $860.3 million of Nscale's lease obligations on the Texas site in exchange for warrants, with $470 million placed in escrow, part of a broader pattern of Nvidia backing the neoclouds (CoreWeave, Nebius, Lambda, and Crusoe among them) that critics call circular financing. Add a heavy and growing debt load, multi-year grid-connection queues across Europe, and reported construction delays at the Essex site, and the gap between Nscale's headline commitments and operating reality remains wide. Early UK accounts covering the seven months to December 2024 showed a loss of about $24 million, according to Fortune. Payne has acknowledged "negative commentators" but insists "every dollar is backed by real revenues." Whether that holds as the company scales toward a possible 2026 IPO is the open question that defines Nscale.