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Nscale, a London-based AI infrastructure company that barely existed two years ago, is planning to raise up to $3 billion in a US initial public offering. The company is targeting a September 2026 listing, with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan guiding the process.
For a company founded in 2024, going public at a $14.6 billion valuation with $51 billion in contracted revenue is the kind of trajectory that makes even seasoned investors do a double-take.
From spin-off to IPO in two years
Nscale was created by Josh Payne, who spun it out of Arkon Energy in 2024. The company operates as what the industry calls a “neocloud,” essentially an AI-native hyperscaler building data centers purpose-built for GPU-heavy AI workloads rather than retrofitting traditional cloud infrastructure.
The fundraising pace tells the story. Nscale pulled in $1.1 billion in a Series B round in late 2025, then followed that up with a $2 billion Series C in March 2026 that pegged its valuation at $14.6 billion. It also secured a $900 million credit facility in July 2026.
Nscale’s $51 billion in contracted revenue represents a backlog of committed compute deals. Customers are locking in capacity years in advance because the alternative is waiting in line behind every other company trying to train or deploy large AI models.
Revenue is ramping fast
Nscale reported approximately $33 million in revenue for the entirety of 2025. By Q1 2026, that figure jumped to around $37 million in a single quarter. Q2 2026 revenue is expected to exceed $100 million.
The company is developing AI-optimized data centers across the UK, Norway, the US, and other regions. Its partnership with NVIDIA for large-scale GPU deployments gives it access to the chips that are the bottleneck in the entire AI supply chain.
The bigger picture for AI infrastructure
Nscale’s IPO plans arrive during a period of extraordinary capital deployment into AI data centers. Hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have collectively committed hundreds of billions to expanding their compute infrastructure. This is where the neocloud category comes in. Companies like Nscale, CoreWeave, and Lambda are positioning themselves as purpose-built alternatives to the legacy cloud giants. CoreWeave went public earlier in 2025, providing a public market comp for Nscale’s listing.
The $3 billion raise would make Nscale one of the larger tech IPOs of 2026. A $51 billion backlog sounds extraordinary, but the key question for public market investors will be the conversion rate: how quickly those contracts turn into recognized revenue, and what the margin profile looks like as data centers scale from construction into full operation.
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