British AI cloud provider Nscale has filed for an initial public offering in New York, setting up one of the biggest tests yet of investor appetite for AI infrastructure stocks.
The London-based company filed its S-1 late Friday and aims to raise up to $3 billion at a valuation of approximately $30 billion, according to CNBC. Nscale will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol NSCL, with Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley leading the books.
Revenue up 1,252%
The filing revealed explosive growth: revenue surged 1,252% to $140.6 million in the six months ended June 30, compared with $10.4 million a year earlier. The company posted a net loss of $1.02 billion, widened from $368.9 million in the same period last year, as it pours money into data center expansion.
Nscale, which is backed by Nvidia, also disclosed it had agreed to sell $3.1 billion in convertible bonds to investors — including $1 billion to Nvidia itself. The company says it has more than $100 billion in contracted revenue.
The neocloud wave
Nscale is part of a wave of AI “neoclouds” — companies building data centers designed from scratch for AI workloads, renting out Nvidia-equipped servers. It competes with CoreWeave and Nebius, which this week raised prices, underscoring solid demand for computing capacity.
CEO Josh Payne spun Nscale out of Arkon Energy, a bitcoin-mining data-center company, in 2024. It initially focused on European data centers powered by renewable energy, particularly hydroelectric power in Norway, and is now expanding across the US, UK, Portugal, and Iceland. The company has 17 contracted data center sites, five of them active, with 1.37 gigawatts of capacity and plans to reach 10 gigawatts.
Market watchers say the listing will test how much enthusiasm remains for AI infrastructure. “The setup for AI infrastructure is good enough to get these deals done, but it’s nothing like the euphoria of a few months ago,” said Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital.
