Nscale, Anthropic in Talks for Second $45B West Virginia Deal

Nscale is in advanced talks with Anthropic for a second roughly $45 billion compute contract, covering another 460-megawatt building at the Monarch Compute Campus in West Virginia, Bloomberg reported. The capacity would again run on Nvidia's Vera Rubin accelerators. According to follow-on coverage, "Anthropic has a right of first refusal on an expected third building" at the site.

The first contract, signed in August, is a six-year, $45 billion, 460 MW lease at the same campus, with delivery beginning in late 2027. Monarch is sized for 1.35 GW in a first phase across more than 2,250 acres in Point Pleasant, Mason County; the remaining buildings are expected to begin providing capacity in 2028. Microsoft has also taken capacity at the site. It is one of 452 AI-infrastructure stories we have logged on our infrastructure feed in the last 90 days.

The talks arrive during a bumpy run-up to Nscale's planned New York Stock Exchange listing under the ticker NSCL, where the UK-headquartered company hopes to raise up to $3 billion. Investors are pushing back on a roughly $30 billion valuation target, with some telling bankers that $16 billion to $19 billion would draw more buyers.

That pricing dispute is unfolding against delivery problems elsewhere in Nscale's book. Its flagship Norwegian facility is running six months behind schedule, with 6.4 MW operational against a 30 MW target, and Microsoft, among Nscale's largest customers, recently backed out of a UK data center agreement after the site hit power-availability delays.