Nscale and Anthropic are reportedly in talks for yet another $45B compute deal

Bloomberg reports that Nscale and Anthropic are in talks for a second compute deal worth about $45 billion, citing people familiar with the negotiations. It would cover a second building at Nscale's Monarch campus in West Virginia, delivering 460 megawatts using NVIDIA's Vera Rubin chips. Anthropic would also hold a right of first refusal on a third building. The sources said talks are ongoing, details could change, and a deal could be finalized within days. Both companies declined to comment.

The first agreement was signed in late August. Nscale's IPO filing puts it at up to about $44.6 billion in payments, a ceiling rather than money collected. A second deal of similar size would make Anthropic one of the largest single customers any independent cloud provider has ever had.

It also arrives as both companies are heading for public markets. Anthropic is expected to go public this year. Nscale is seeking about a $30 billion valuation, and Bloomberg has reported that some investors want that target lowered.

We understand why Anthropic keeps signing. Demand for its products, especially coding tools, has been running ahead of the compute it can get, and locking in future capacity is how a lab avoids rationing customers in 2028. Spreading that capacity across several suppliers is also sensible risk management. If useful AI is going to reach more people, someone has to build the power and the buildings.

But look at who is on the other side of the table. Nscale's own filing showed about $103 billion in contracted revenue, with roughly 85% tied to Microsoft and Anthropic. Reported coverage of that filing said Nscale had not yet secured financing for the first Anthropic deal, that Anthropic can terminate if milestones are missed, and that only about $2.6 billion of total contract value was active at the end of August. In the first half of the year, Nscale reported a net loss of $1.02 billion on $140.6 million in sales. A second $45 billion contract on the same campus deepens that concentration rather than easing it.

The timing is hard to ignore. Another headline contract would strengthen Nscale's IPO story just as investors push back on its valuation. That does not make the deal fake. It does mean public buyers should read it as contracted intent with exit ramps, not as guaranteed revenue.

The broader harm is systemic. When one lab's demand underwrites a supplier's buildout, and that supplier's IPO underwrites its financing, a slowdown at the lab ripples into power projects, chip orders and retirement accounts. Some investors are already worried the industry is spending too much for too little profit. The other cost is local: multi-gigawatt campuses need enormous amounts of electricity, and the communities hosting them deserve clear answers about grid impact before the third building gets its right of first refusal.

Our read: Anthropic is buying insurance against scarcity, and that is rational. I'm watching whether Nscale can show financing and construction milestones, not just signatures.

Nscale is a U.K.-founded AI cloud company backed by NVIDIA. Its Monarch campus in Mason County, West Virginia, is described in its filing as scalable to more than 8 gigawatts of gross power when complete. Nscale filed publicly for a U.S. listing in September and has been working through SEC comments before starting formal marketing. Anthropic has struck a long series of large compute agreements over the past year.