AI data center builder Nscale reportedly seeking $3B IPO

Nscale Global Holdings Ltd., an AI data center builder based in London, is reportedly planning to raise $3 billion through an initial public offering (IPO) that could occur as early as next month, according to Bloomberg sources. The company intends to list its shares on a U.S. stock exchange, with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. managing the IPO. The specific valuation target for Nscale has not been disclosed.

Founded in 2021, Nscale builds and operates AI data centers, with its most recent funding round valued at $14.6 billion. The March funding included participation from notable investors such as Nvidia Corp., Nokia Corp., and others. Nscale opened its first data center in Norway last year and currently operates infrastructure in over a dozen locations worldwide.

The company aims to expand its data center capacity from 831 megawatts to approximately 11 gigawatts. Its flagship project is a 2,250-acre data center campus in West Virginia, estimated to have a theoretical capacity of over eight gigawatts. Microsoft Corp. is the anchor tenant, having commissioned 1.35 gigawatts of capacity from Nscale in March. The processing power will be delivered using Nvidia's Vera Rubin NVL72 systems, with each appliance featuring 72 of the chipmaker's latest graphics processing units.

Nscale also hosts 300,000 previous-generation Blackwell Ultra chips for Microsoft at four other locations, part of a reportedly $14 billion infrastructure contract. The company offers cloud services, including managed versions of Kubernetes and Slurm frameworks, and a prompt engineering tool to enhance AI workloads. In December, Nscale acquired startup Anyscale Inc. for $1.65 billion, gaining a commercial version of Ray, an open-source tool for optimizing AI clusters.

Currently, Nscale is one of two AI data center builders preparing for an IPO, with rival Switch Inc. filing for one earlier this month, which could value it at $50 billion.