AI data center builder Nscale Global Holdings Ltd. is reportedly preparing to raise $3 billion in an initial public offering that could land on a U.S. stock exchange as soon as next month. Reporters, citing sources familiar with the matter, said the London-based company has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to manage the listing.
The sources didn’t specify the valuation Nscale is targeting. The company, which builds and operates artificial intelligence data centers, received a $14.6 billion valuation following its most recent funding round in March. That raise included participation from Nvidia Corp., Nokia Corp. and other high-profile backers.
A pipeline of AI infrastructure across the globe
Nscale opened its first data center last year in Norway. Today, the business is building AI infrastructure in more than a dozen locations worldwide. It hopes to grow its data center capacity from 831 megawatts to about 11 gigawatts.
The flagship project is a 2,250-acre data center campus in West Virginia. Nscale estimates the site can theoretically accommodate more than eight gigawatts of computing capacity. It will host a dedicated electrical grid with on-site power generation infrastructure.
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The campus’ anchor tenant is Microsoft Corp., which commissioned 1.35 gigawatts of capacity from Nscale in March. The firm will deliver that processing power using Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 systems. Each appliance features 72 of the chipmaker’s latest Rubin graphics processing units.
Nscale will also host 300,000 previous-generation Blackwell Ultra chips for Microsoft in four other locations. Those GPUs are part of an infrastructure contract reportedly worth $14 billion. The sources stated that Nscale’s total contracted revenue, or the value of its data center contracts with customers, is about $51 billion.
Software expansion and a rival’s filing
Beyond raw hardware, Nscale offers cloud services that make its infrastructure easier to use. Managed versions of the Kubernetes and Slurm frameworks help lower AI workloads’ infrastructure usage. A prompt engineering tool helps developers boost the quality of model responses.
Last month, the company expanded its software portfolio by acquiring startup Anyscale Inc. for $1.65 billion. The deal bought it a commercial version of Ray, an open-source tool that helps optimize AI clusters. Anyscale’s paid offering makes the software easier to use and adds observability features.
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It’s a busy moment for AI data center operators looking at public markets. Nscale is one of two such builders preparing to go public in the near future. Earlier this month, rival Switch Inc. filed for an IPO that could reportedly value it at $50 billion.
There’s a fair amount of uncertainty baked into these listings, though. The scale of Nscale’s ambition — growing capacity more than tenfold — depends on securing both financing and customers for facilities that don’t yet exist. The West Virginia campus alone could take years to fully build out, and demand for AI compute has historically been hard to predict beyond a couple of quarters out. Still, the contracted revenue figures suggest Microsoft and others are willing to commit early.
Market activity for AI infrastructure IPOs has been relatively quiet compared with the flurry in chip design and software. That could change if Nscale’s listing goes through as reported. The company’s ability to deliver on its contracted capacity will likely be a focus for investors reviewing its financials ahead of the debut.