From stealth to $700M: Nscale emerges as Europe’s fastest-growing AI infrastructure startup

Once unknown, Nscale is now backed by Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI as it builds Europe’s next AI supercomputers.

Two years ago, Nscale barely existed. The London-based AI infrastructure startup hadn’t raised a cent, hadn’t announced itself publicly, and was still spinning out of a crypto mining outfit called Arkon Energy. Today, it’s sitting on nearly $700 million in fresh funding from Nvidia and locking in multi-billion-dollar partnerships with Microsoft and OpenAI.

It’s the kind of overnight rise that only happens when you’re at the center of the biggest tech race on the planet: artificial intelligence.

This week, Nscale announced a string of deals that put it squarely in the same conversation as CoreWeave, the U.S. infrastructure provider that’s become a critical supplier to Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI. Nscale signed a five-year, $6.2 billion agreement with Microsoft and Norwegian energy giant Aker to build “hyperscale AI infrastructure” across Europe. The company is also working with OpenAI on Stargate, a Norway-based data center project that aims to rack up 100,000 Nvidia GPUs before 2027.

The momentum is staggering for a startup that only came out of stealth in May 2024. A year later, it was named as a partner to Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI on the same day the U.K. rolled out a wave of AI announcements timed to President Donald Trump’s state visit.

Nscale: Building Europe’s AI backbone

For Europe, Nscale’s rise couldn’t come at a better time. Policymakers across the continent have been pushing for “sovereign AI” — the idea that the data, compute, and infrastructure powering artificial intelligence should live on European soil. Josh Payne, Nscale’s CEO and former Arkon founder, has been quick to position the company as the answer.

“What the continent needs is large AI infrastructure projects deploying compute [power],” Payne told CNBC in July. “The ecosystem can consume from the project to build AI products, to generate productivity growth and economic benefit.”

His pitch landed. In January, Britain unveiled an AI “action plan” to support domestic players. By spring, OpenAI was announcing plans for a Stargate data center in Norway, with Nscale committing $1 billion to the build. This week’s $6.2 billion pact with Microsoft and Aker cements Nscale as one of Europe’s most ambitious AI infrastructure bets.

The CoreWeave comparison

If the story feels familiar, it’s because CoreWeave charted a similar path. The New Jersey-based company started with GPUs for crypto mining in 2017, pivoted to AI, and is now worth $58 billion after going public this year. Like CoreWeave, Nscale is combining massive GPU clusters with software orchestration, offering end-to-end services for AI workloads.

But Nscale is adding its own spin: sustainability. The company is banking on closed-loop liquid cooling and renewable-friendly sites to keep environmental costs lower than traditional hyperscalers. Its pipeline has ballooned from 300 megawatts to 1.3 gigawatts in less than a year, with 120 megawatts slated for 2025 alone.

From Crypto to GPUs

That pivot from crypto to AI has been a winning play. Back in 2022, when OpenAI’s ChatGPT sparked the generative AI boom, Nscale was still part of Arkon Energy, focused on infrastructure for mining Ethereum. Sensing the bigger opportunity, Payne spun out Nscale to chase the demand for AI-ready data centers.

The gamble paid off. Microsoft will work with Nscale to build the U.K.’s largest supercomputer in Essex, starting with 23,040 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs in early 2027. OpenAI will deploy 8,000 GPUs in the first phase of Stargate U.K., with room to scale up to 31,000. Across Europe, Nscale is positioning itself as the infrastructure supplier for governments, startups, and the biggest AI labs.

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, put it bluntly: “No one can make that kind of capital investment unless they’ve got somebody already committed to spend the money once the work is complete, and that’s the role we’re playing.”

What’s next

Nscale plans to launch its own public cloud service in early 2025, giving developers direct access to its GPU clusters and AI-specific tooling. That move will put it in closer competition with not just CoreWeave, but also the hyperscalers it’s partnering with today.

For now, the startup is moving at breakneck speed, fueled by deep-pocketed backers and the continent’s political push for homegrown AI infrastructure. A company that barely existed two years ago is now building some of Europe’s largest AI supercomputers.

And in a market where GPUs are the new oil, Nscale has put itself in a prime spot to drill.