Nscale, a British AI compute provider founded two years ago, is in talks to raise $3.5B in pre-IPO financing ahead of a public listing that could come later this month. The package splits into $1.5B in convertible notes sold to a group of investors and an additional $2B in financing from Nvidia, according to a Bloomberg report Friday. The scale of the raise, on top of a listing timeline measured in weeks, puts Nscale among the fastest-scaling AI infrastructure companies in Europe.
Nvidia's $2B check would be its second bet on the company this year. The chipmaker already participated in Nscale's March Series B, a $1.1B round led by Norwegian investment firm Aker. That was a step up from Nscale's December 2024 Series A, which raised $155M — a roughly 7x jump in round size in 15 months.
The pre-IPO structure signals urgency. Convertible notes let Nscale pull in capital now and settle the equity math after the listing prices, which is useful when a company's valuation is moving quickly and management would rather not fix a number today. Pairing that with a strategic anchor investment from Nvidia gives the IPO book a marquee name before shares hit public markets.
Key facts
- 01Nscale is seeking $3.5B in pre-IPO financing: $1.5B in convertible notes plus $2B from Nvidia.
- 02The British AI infrastructure firm may list publicly as early as later this month, two years after founding.
- 03Nscale signed a deal with Anthropic worth approximately $45B and is telling investors it has $103B in projected revenue from signed leases.
- 04Nvidia previously joined the March Series B, a $1.1B round led by Aker that Nscale called the largest in European history.
- 05The December 2024 Series A raised $155M.
Nscale has publicly framed its earlier round in superlative terms.
“the largest Series B in European history.”— Nscale, company statement
The financing pitch is built on a customer book that has grown fast. Nscale recently signed a deal with Anthropic worth approximately $45B, one of the largest compute contracts disclosed by any AI infrastructure provider this year. Earlier this week, reports surfaced that Nscale has been telling potential investors it has approximately $103B in revenue following the Anthropic agreement.
That $103B figure is not current sales. It is a projection based on signed customer leases, according to The Information — future contracted revenue that will be recognized over the lease terms, not cash already booked. The distinction matters for public-market investors, who will price the IPO against reported revenue and cash flow, not lease backlogs. Still, a nine-figure signed backlog at a two-year-old company is a striking data point.
The Nvidia relationship runs through the whole story. Nvidia sells the GPUs Nscale racks; Nvidia funds the company that racks them; and Nvidia's customers, including Anthropic, sign the leases that justify the funding. Similar loops now define much of the AI infrastructure market, with Nvidia sitting at the center of the capital stack as well as the supply chain.
The AI infrastructure buildout has produced a wave of similarly structured companies — CoreWeave, Lambda, Crusoe, and now Nscale — all competing to lock in GPU supply and long-dated customer commitments before the market resets. Compute has become the constraint that frontier labs plan around, and providers that can guarantee capacity multiple years out are commanding valuations that would have looked absurd for infrastructure businesses a decade ago.
The risk in the model is the mirror image of its appeal. A $103B backlog is only worth what customers actually pay over the lease term, and the AI compute market is priced against assumptions about GPU generations, model efficiency gains, and end-customer demand that could shift quickly. If Anthropic or another anchor tenant renegotiates, defaults, or migrates to a competing provider, the projected revenue compresses fast. IPO investors will want to see the concentration disclosures.
Nscale's raise and expected listing are a test of how far public markets will extend the AI infrastructure premium. A successful IPO at the valuations implied by a $3.5B pre-IPO round would validate the CoreWeave-style playbook — heavy debt, GPU-collateralized leases, hyperscaler-adjacent customers — for a second wave of entrants. A soft reception would tell the next Nscale to stay private longer and lean harder on strategic capital from Nvidia itself.
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