AI compute provider Nscale is looking for $3.5B in pre-IPO financing

Nscale, a UK AI infrastructure company founded only two years ago, has said it may go public as early as later this month. Bloomberg reports it is in talks to raise another $3.5 billion beforehand: $1.5 billion in convertible notes sold to a group of investors, plus about $2 billion in financing from Nvidia.

That stack sits on top of a March Series B of $1.1 billion led by Aker—with Nvidia already in the round—that Nscale billed as the largest Series B in European history, after a $155 million Series A in December 2024. Separately, the company recently signed an Anthropic deal worth roughly $45 billion and has been telling potential investors it has about $103 billion in "revenue" after that deal. Per The Information, that figure is a projection from signed customer leases, not current sales.

The financing structure is the story, not the headline number. Convertible notes ahead of an imminent IPO are a way to pull forward capital and lock in a conversion path without fully pricing the equity today. Pair that with another Nvidia check and the pitch becomes circular in a familiar way: the chipmaker that already backed the Series B is asked to underwrite more of the capacity build that will buy still more of its silicon.

Signal Desk's read: treat the $103 billion line as marketing arithmetic until audited revenue shows up. Lease-backed projections can be real contractual commitments and still be a dangerous substitute for cash collections, utilization, and delivery risk. A $45 billion Anthropic lease is a demand signal; it is not proof that Nscale can energize, staff, and operate the campuses on the timeline investors will underwrite at IPO.

The speed is the tell. Two years from founding to a possible public listing, with a European mega-round already claimed and a pre-IPO raise larger than the Series B, is how AI compute has become competitive currency—TechCrunch's phrase, and an accurate one. Public-market buyers will have to decide whether they are underwriting a landlord with signed tenants or a story about contracted watts that still need to be built.

Nvidia's dual role as shareholder and potential $2 billion financier concentrates dependency. If the IPO slips, the converts and the Nvidia money become bridge capital with different politics. If the IPO clears, early converts convert into a crowded cap table that already includes the industry's dominant supplier. Either path, governance and related-party optics matter as much as gigawatts.

TechCrunch says it reached out to Nscale and Nvidia for comment. The Bloomberg report is the primary sourcing for the $3.5 billion split; the $103 billion projection attribution runs through The Information. Nothing in the piece confirms terms, valuation, or that either tranche has closed.