Nscale Closes $3.36 Billion Pre-IPO Financing as It Preps a Public Debut Valued at $35 Billion
British AI neocloud Nscale secures $3.36 billion in convertible financing led by Third Point and Nvidia ahead of an NYSE listing targeting a $35 billion valuation.
Overview
British AI infrastructure company Nscale has secured $3.36 billion in convertible financing as it prepares for a New York Stock Exchange listing, led by hedge fund Third Point. Of that total, $2.36 billion is available to the company immediately, with an additional $1 billion coming from existing investor Nvidia in mid-November. The round arrives as Nscale, which filed its IPO paperwork the prior week, is expected to be valued at $35 billion on the NYSE and is seeking to raise $3 billion in the offering.
Nscale previously raised $2 billion in a Series C round in March 2026 at a $14.6 billion valuation. The new convertible notes will convert into shares immediately after the planned IPO.
What We Know
Beyond Third Point, the consortium behind the immediate tranche includes Apollo, Citadel and more than a dozen other institutional investors. Nscale was spun out of Australian cryptocurrency mining company Arkon Energy two years ago and is currently developing large data center campuses including in Norway and West Virginia. The West Virginia site is an AI campus with an on-site microgrid capable of generating 2 gigawatts of power when it comes online in early 2028, and according to the company it won’t draw any electricity from the public grid. Nscale’s data center network includes 16 other sites, five of them company-owned and the rest operated by partners.
“This marks a milestone for Nscale as we continue scaling our full-stack AI infrastructure to meet unprecedented global demand,” said Nscale founder and Chief Executive Officer Josh Payne.
Ahead of the listing, Nscale has also been building out its board and disclosing its finances for the first time. Earlier this month, the company added Fidji Simo, formerly CEO of AGI deployment at OpenAI and essentially the No. 2 executive at the AI lab, who left OpenAI in July citing health reasons. She joins existing board members Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker and Nick Clegg. “Fidji joins a board we’ve built deliberately, with the experience of scaling platforms to the largest in the world, and the independence, financial rigor and operating depth to which companies at this scale are held,” Payne said in announcing her appointment.
Nscale’s IPO filing shows the company has amassed over $103 billion worth of contracts, but that revenue is highly concentrated: about 85% comes from a deal to supply Microsoft with $43.8 billion worth of compute through 2033, and another supply agreement worth $44.6 billion with Anthropic. Notably, Anthropic’s agreement is contingent on Nscale obtaining financing, and the AI lab retains the right to walk away from or cancel the deal if Nscale fails to hit milestones the filing categorizes as “stringent”. The filing also disclosed that Nscale reported revenue of $140.6 million for the six months ended June 30, up from $10.4 million a year earlier, while net losses jumped to $1.02 billion from $369 million in the same period.
What We Don’t Know
Nscale has not disclosed an exact IPO listing date beyond the general expectation of a debut this fall. It is also unclear how the $2.36 billion immediate tranche will be allocated across the company’s data center buildout versus other uses, or how the “stringent” milestones tied to the Anthropic contract will be measured and reported to investors.