Nvidia-backed UK AI company Nscale raises $1.1 billion funding round

British artificial intelligence infrastructure company NSCALE is increasing the bulk of cash as it appears to be stepping up AI data centre deployments across Europe.

London-based NSCALE said Thursday it raised $1.1 billion in the Bumper Series B funding round. The investment was led by Norwegian industrial investment company Aker and includes additional participation from a number of companies. nvidia, Nokia and Dell.

This investment highlights the ongoing demand for the powerful computing infrastructure needed to train and implement strong fundamental AI models from companies like Openai. Microsoft and Google.

Nscale has become a central player in the UK’s ambition to become a global AI powerhouse. Last week, Microsoft, Nvidia, Openai and others announced billion-dollar projects involving NSCALE to build AI computing infrastructure across the UK.

“We are creating one of the biggest global (infrastructure) platforms of its kind, aimed at meeting burgeoning demand at an unprecedented scale and unlocking breakthroughs,” said Josh Payne, CEO and co-founder of Nscale.

“This allows NSCALE to provide access to things that are short of customers and are extremely popular.

NSCALE was spun from Australian cryptocurrency mining company Arkon Energy in 2023 to address the rising demand for data centers that can handle AI workloads.

Working with Openai in the UK and Norway, we are building a new data center as part of ChatGpt Maker’s Stargate Investment Project. Nscale said that part of the Series B funding will be directed at “enable rapid deployment” of the Stargate Data Center project in Europe.

The company has committed $1 billion to the Norwegian Project with the goal of acquiring 100,000 NVIDIA Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) on its site prior to 2027. Meanwhile, the UK site will house 8,000 GPUs early next year, and the options will expand to around 31,000 GPUs over time.

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