London AI infrastructure firm Nscale files for $35bn US listing

Nscale has filed for an initial public offering in the US, as it looks to tap into AI’s growing demand for infrastructure.

The Nvidia backed AI cloud provider is targeting a valuation of up to $35bn.

The group will also launch a retail offering for UK investors, allowing them to purchase shares via Retailbook.

The London-based firm, which has former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg as members of its board, reported a net of loss of $1bn on revenues of $141m in the first half of the year, with the bulk of losses caused by non-cash charges.

In March the group was valued at roughly $14.6bn in a funding round led by Norwegian energy group Aker and 8090 industries. Nvidia, Dell and Nokia also participated in the round.

It will list on the New York Stock Exchange while maintaining its British domicile. The firm doubled its London office space last month, giving it capacity for 300 more staff.

Rapid scaling

Nscale’s listing plans come just two years after it was founded. 

The group was spun out of Australian bitcoin mining infrastructure group Arkon Energy in 2024, rapidly growing into one of Europe’s best funded data centre providers.

The group, which was founded by Josh Payne, has also received endorsement from Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, who declared it a “national champion for the UK” last year.

The Silicon Valley giant has said its plans to invest £500m into Nscale.

Nscale said its data centres are running roughly 25,000 graphic processing units under contracts worth $2.6bn at the end of August.

Nvidia plans to deploy 436,000 chips under $101bn of contracts with Nscale.

AI boom and concerns

Nscale’s rapid growth comes amid a growing demand for AI infrastructure in this phase of the artificial intelligence cycle.

The need for infrastructure has caused cloud providers including Core Weave, Crusoe and Nscale to win big contracts with AI giants such as Microsoft and Open AI.

Nscale also signed a landmark deal with Anthropic last month to rent capacity from its flagship data centre in West Virginia, in a deal worth up to $45bn over six years.

But AI development was called into question earlier this week, after Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei called for the industry to slow down AI development.

His calls were backed by Open AI’s Sam Altman and SpaceX’s Elon Musk and sparked a sell off in both AI infrastructure and semiconductor stocks amid fears Big Tech would pull out some investment in data centres.

Nuclear energy company Holtec International backed out of its planned IPO on Wednesday over fears of a potential slowdown in the market.