Nvidia Backs Nscale at $14.6bn as AI Infrastructure Race Intensifies
Nscale, the UK-based artificial intelligence data center startup founded just two years ago, has raised $2 billion in a Series C funding round at a valuation of $14.6 billion, cementing its position as one of the fastest-growing companies in the global AI infrastructure buildout.
The round, led by Norwegian industrial conglomerate Aker ASA and 8090 Industries, features chip giant Nvidia as a strategic investor alongside an unusually diverse group of financial heavyweights. Citadel, Jane Street, Point72, Astra Capital Management and Linden Advisors joined alongside technology and industrial players including Dell, Lenovo and Nokia.
The fresh capital is inclusive of a $433 million pre-Series C SAFE round that closed in October, the company said. It follows a $1.1 billion Series B announced in September and a $1.4 billion delayed draw term loan disclosed in February, underscoring the pace at which Nscale has assembled its financing stack since it was founded in 2024.
Board Appointments Signal Institutional Ambitions
Alongside the funding announcement, Nscale revealed three high-profile additions to its board of directors. Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Meta, joins alongside Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister who served most recently as a senior executive at Meta, and Susan Decker, the former president of Yahoo. The appointments signal that Nscale is positioning itself for a period of heightened scrutiny, whether from regulators, potential public market investors, or the large enterprises it is courting as customers.
Nscale confirmed to CNBC in October that it is eyeing an initial public offering, though the company has not provided a timeline.
The Infrastructure Thesis
Josh Payne, the CEO and founder of Nscale, framed the company's mission in expansive terms. The AI boom is "leading to the largest infrastructure buildout in human history," he said in a statement, an assertion that closely echoes language used by Nvidia's own chief executive Jensen Huang. "We are building this foundation that the market sits on, the engine of superintelligence," Payne added.
Nscale operates data centers in the United Kingdom, the United States, Norway, Portugal and Iceland. The company describes its offering as vertically integrated AI infrastructure, spanning GPU compute and networking through to data services and orchestration software. The proceeds from the Series C will be directed towards expanding that footprint across Europe, North America and Asia.
Big Tech Relationships Underpin Growth
The company has rapidly accumulated significant commercial relationships with some of the world's largest technology groups. In October, Nscale announced an expanded partnership with Microsoft, a deal first reported by the Financial Times and subsequently verified by CNBC, which carries a value of $14 billion. Over the summer, Nscale partnered with OpenAI to launch a Stargate-branded AI data center in Norway, a project that has drawn attention given the broader significance of the Stargate initiative to US AI policy.
Nvidia's participation as a strategic investor adds further weight to Nscale's market positioning. As the dominant supplier of the graphics processing units that power AI workloads, Nvidia has a direct commercial interest in the success of companies that are building out the infrastructure required to deploy its chips at scale.
The New York Times noted the broader human story behind Nscale's lead investor Aker ASA, describing the Norwegian conglomerate as a former coal miner now firmly planted at the centre of the AI data center boom, a transition that illustrates how capital from legacy industrial sectors is being redeployed into the infrastructure layer of the artificial intelligence economy.
