Key points
- Nvidia-backed Nscale files for a NYSE IPO
- Signed contracts dwarf what is actually running
- Two customers are most of the total
- Anthropic's buildout is not yet financed
Nscale, a London-based company that builds and runs AI data centers, filed to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NSCL. The filing reports $103.4 billion in signed customer contracts as of August 31, up from $38 billion at the end of last year.
That is contract value, not revenue. It counts multi-year commitments, not cash collected. Most of the compute behind it doesn't exist yet. Nscale had about 461,000 GPUs either deployed or under contract at the end of August. About 25,000 were operating.
Two customers, and a financing catch
Two contracts are most of the total. Anthropic signed an agreement on August 25 worth up to $44.6 billion. Microsoft is the other, worth up to $43.8 billion through 2033. Together they come to $88.4 billion, about 85 percent of the contract value.
The Anthropic deal covers Nvidia Vera Rubin systems at Nscale's Monarch Compute Campus. But Nscale does not yet have binding commitments for the financing needed to build it, according to the filing, and the contract lets Anthropic terminate if that money is not secured by a set deadline.
The Microsoft program covers about 200,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs across the United States, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Norway, with Dell helping build it out.
The financials and the backers
Nscale's first-half revenue was $140.6 million, up from $10.4 million a year earlier. The operating loss was $492 million and the net loss was $1.02 billion, which included $457 million of fair-value losses.
Nvidia agreed to invest $1 billion in Nscale as part of a $3.1 billion convertible financing signed on September 15. Nvidia invests in several of the clouds that buy its chips. In March, Nscale raised $2 billion at a $14.6 billion valuation. Backers in that round included Citadel, Jane Street and Point72. That was a private funding valuation, not a target for the IPO.
Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley are leading the offering. Nscale hasn't set a share count or a price range.
