Nscale raises $1.1B series B funding to build Europe’s largest AI data centers

A year ago, hardly anyone had heard of Nscale. Now, the London-based startup has pulled off one of Europe’s biggest AI infrastructure raises yet, securing $1.1 billion in Series B funding as it positions itself at the center of the continent’s AI race.

The round was led by Aker, the Norwegian industrial investment giant, with support from Nvidia, Nokia, and Dell. It comes just a week after Nscale locked in nearly $700 million from Nvidia and signed multibillion-dollar partnerships with Microsoft and OpenAI. The momentum underscores how quickly the company has gone from a spinout to a heavyweight in the scramble for GPU-driven capacity.

For governments and tech giants alike, Nscale has become a key partner in Britain’s bid to be seen as a global AI hub. Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI have already tapped the company for large-scale projects tied to the U.K.’s AI infrastructure push, timed with President Donald Trump’s recent state visit.

“We are building the AI-native Infrastructure platform of tomorrow,” said Josh Payne, CEO of Nscale. “AI is reshaping industries, economies, and national strategies – but it cannot happen without the physical backbone: the data centres, the GPUs and the software to orchestrate them. We are building a vertically integrated, AI-engineered foundation designed to power the next generation of technological change, enabling industries and innovators across the globe to achieve what today feels impossible.

How UK Startup Nscale Went From Stealth to Raising the Largest Series B Funding in European History

Nscale’s origin story is unconventional. The company spun out of Arkon Energy, an Australian crypto mining firm, in 2023 to meet the rising demand for AI-grade data centers. By May 2024, it emerged from stealth and, within twelve months, was partnering with some of the biggest names in tech.

Now the company is putting billions behind hard infrastructure. In Norway, Nscale is investing $1 billion to build a site equipped with 100,000 Nvidia GPUs before 2027. In the U.K., it plans to open a new data center early next year with 8,000 GPUs, eventually scaling to more than 30,000. These projects are part of OpenAI’s Stargate initiative, which aims to expand the training capacity of its future models.

“We are creating one of the largest global platforms of its kind – purpose-built to meet surging demand and unlock breakthroughs at unprecedented scale. This allows Nscale to provide our customers access to scarce, and highly sought after, compute capacity and rapidly accelerate the build-out of secure, compliant, and energy-efficient AI infrastructure,” Payne said in a news release.

The next big step is coming in early 2025, when Nscale intends to launch its own public cloud service. That move will give developers direct access to its GPU clusters and AI-focused tools—putting the company in direct competition with CoreWeave and, potentially, the same hyperscalers it is partnering with today.

For now, Nscale is riding a wave of capital and political support that few startups can match. A firm that barely existed two years ago is now laying the foundation for some of Europe’s largest AI supercomputers. And in a market where GPUs have become the new oil, Nscale looks determined to be the company doing the drilling.