AI factory builder Nscale announces another $2bn of funding

Nscale, an artificial intelligence (AI) factory builder and key plank in the UK government’s AI growth strategy, has announced $2bn of C-series funding.

The announcement takes funding for the datacentre builder to just over $4.9bn in just over a year. The funding round is based on a valuation for Nscale of $14.6bn. 

Much of that is based on Nscale’s datacentre development pipeline of more than 1.3GW of capacity. It has also reported it has contracted supply for 200,000 Nvidia GB300 graphics processing units (GPUs) and agreements to supply capacity for Microsoft via many of its planned sites.

Last year, Nscale announced its intention to invest $2.5bn in UK datacentres up to 2028. These include fixed sites, but also modular datacentres.

Key among these is its Loughton development in Essex, where 50MW scaling to 90MW of capacity – claimed as the UK’s largest AI datacentre – using 23,000 GB300 GPUs is slated to go live in Q4 2026.

Loughton is a combination of modular build for rapid deployment and fixed capacity, which will take longer to become available. 

Nscale acquired modular datacentre provider Kontena in mid-2024. A modular datacentre allows for prefabricated units that can be delivered in months, compared with fixed site builds that take 24 to 36 months. 

Nscale also has available datacentre capacity at leased space in datacentres in two other sites in Norway, and one each in Slough, Iceland and North Carolina.

Nscale is registered in the UK with Companies House, and has a registered address in Cheshire with a business administration service.

Its founder, Josh Payne, was a founder of Australia-based Arkon Energy, which provided infrastructure for crypto-currency mining.

Leaders in the current round of funding are Norwegian industrial investment company Aker ASA, plus US-based private equity investor 8090 Industries. Further investors in this round include Dell, Lenovo, Nokia and Nvidia.  

The company has described itself as the UK’s “only full-stack sovereign AI infrastructure provider”, and been name-checked as “British firm Nscale” in two government press releases – one relating to work with OpenAI to create sovereign AI compute capacity, and another about its involvement in the Loughton datacentre.

Also announced alongside the new funding is the appointment of former Liberal Democrat leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as board member. Clegg is also a partner at investment company Hiro Capital, and former president of global affairs at Meta.