Nscale Secures $1.1 Billion for AI Data Center Expansion

Sep 26, 2025
Nscale, a UK-based AI data center developer, has raised $1.1 billion in a financing round led by Aker ASA, with participation from Nvidia and Nokia, to expand its infrastructure footprint.

Nscale, a UK-based developer of AI data centers, has raised $1.1 billion in financing to expand its infrastructure, according to Bloomberg. The funding round was led by Norwegian energy conglomerate Aker, with participation from investors including Nvidia and Nokia.

The investment will support Nscale's plans to construct a data center in Norway, with OpenAI as an anchor customer. Aker has committed $285 million in cash and land for the project, securing a 9.3% stake in Nscale. The financing round values Nscale at approximately $3.1 billion.

Nscale, which emerged from a cryptocurrency mining operation, is now focused on developing AI infrastructure. The company plans to use the funds to deploy AI infrastructure across Europe, North America, and the Middle East. This expansion includes a significant investment in UK data centers, where Nscale aims to install 60,000 Nvidia GPUs as part of an £11 billion investment alongside US hyperscaler Coreweave.

The startup's recent partnerships with tech giants like OpenAI and Microsoft highlight its strategic role in the growing demand for AI computing resources. Nscale's collaboration with Microsoft involves a $6.2 billion agreement to provide AI computing capacity from a new data center in Norway.

We hope you enjoyed this article

Consider subscribing to one of our newsletters like Silicon Brief, AI Funding Brief or Daily AI Brief.

Free newsletter

AI Funding Brief

Whitepaper

Tensordyne Napier: What If One Rack Could Do the Work of Nine?

Tensordyne

This Tensordyne whitepaper presents Napier, an inference-focused AI processor and rack-scale system based on the company’s TDN Math logarithmic number system. It examines infrastructure requirements for large mixture-of-experts and agentic models, compares major inference architecture approaches, and details the TDN AIP processor, TDN72 pod, TDN Link fabric, and Napier Ultra configuration. The paper reports simulation-based performance, cost, and accuracy-validation results, including Tensordyne’s projected comparison of one Napier rack with a nine-rack Nvidia Rubin plus Groq deployment; the chip is reported as taped out and in fabrication.

Read more
Free, six days a week

Daily AI Brief: the AI news that matters, in your inbox.