Nscale snaps up major US data centre site, inks AI compute deal with Microsoft

Nscale, the UK AI infrastructure startup backed by Nvidia, has snapped up a major AI data centre site in the US and inked an AI compute deal with Microsoft at the site.

The deal underscores the ambitions of Nscale, which only came out of stealth in 2024, in the US, as it acquires one of its largest data centre sites. The data centre site deal will see Nscale buy American Intelligence & Power Corporation, which owns the Monarch Compute Campus in West Virginia.

The 2,250-acre data centre site expects to have two gigawatts of power by the first half of 2028, expanded to eight gigawatts by 2031. Josh Payne, CEO of Nscale, said: “Nscale is a global company, and the US is the world's largest AI infrastructure market. AI infrastructure needs to be built where demand is, and right now a significant share of that demand is in the United States. Monarch allows us to meet that demand. The acquisition builds on our existing US footprint and reflects the pace at which we are scaling to serve customers around the world."

According to The Information, which first reported the story, Amazon and Meta were also interested in acquiring the site, which it says will require billions of dollars of financing to develop AI data centre faciilities at the site. Nscale was not available when asked about this. 

The report also says that Nscale told investors that acquiring the data centre campus would triple its projections for near-term revenue. It is not known what Nscale’s current revenue is.

Nscale, which recently raised $2bn in a funding round, has also announced a deal with Microsoft, which will rent 1.35 gigawatts of servers underpinned by Nvidia Vera Rubin chips, beginning in 2027 at the site.

Last year, Nscale bagged a contract valued up to $14bn with Microsoft to build AI data centres in Texas. It has also announced plans to operate data centres in the UK and Norway. The startup is providing AI infrastructure for OpenAI’s AI data centre in Norway, called Stargate Norway, and its UK equivalent, Stargate UK.