Nvidia-backed AI cloud provider Nscale has just hoovered up $2bn in fresh cash and claims that the funding values the UK-headquartered, two-year-old outfit at $14.6bn.
Dealroom reckons it is the biggest-ever Series C for a European start-up, beating French AI firm Mistral’s €1.7bn round led by ASML in September.
Nscale is pitching this as another vote of confidence in AI infrastructure, even as the cocaine-nose jobs of Wall Street fret about the tech’s impact and the Middle East conflict bites into energy and chip supply chains.
The company is stuffing its board with famous faces, adding Meta, former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and UK, former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.
Clegg told the FT: “If you want the world generally to participate in this technology, it’s a good thing to have players who are not just China and [US] West Coast-based.”
Yahoo, former executive Susan Decker is joining too, and she already sits on the boards of Berkshire Hathaway and Costco Wholesale.
Nscale was spun out of Australian bitcoin mining infrastructure group Arkon Energy in 2024 and rode booming demand from US big tech, alongside cloud upstarts CoreWeave, Crusoe and Nebius.
The deal lands not long after Nscale’s $1.1bn financing in September, then a contract worth up to $14bn with Microsoft to build a large AI data centre in Texas.
Last month, it lined up a further $1.4bn in debt, backed by its growing stockpile of Nvidia GPUs, from investors including funds managed by Blue Owl and LuminArx.
Blue Owl shares have dropped about a fifth in the past month, with nerves about its lending to software firms, big-ticket data centre bets with Meta and CoreWeave and exposure to a collapsed UK property outfit.
UK business secretary Peter Kyle said: “Britain has no shortage of ambitious companies ready to scale and Nscale’s historic raise shows the strength of the UK’s AI ecosystem and the confidence global investors have in it,” said UK business secretary Peter Kyle.
