Anthropic inks $45bn AI compute deal with UK's Nscale
Anthropic has agreed to rent AI compute capacity from UK-based Nscale in a six-year, $45bn deal, gaining access to 460MW of power powered by Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips.
The deal comes as AI developers continue to face limits on computing power. Nscale, founded in 2024, is a "neocloud" provider focused on AI inference and training. It is building data centres in five countries including the UK, and has raised over $5bn from investors including Nokia, Nvidia, Dell and Blue Owl. The startup is also targeting an IPO this year.
Nscale has previously supplied compute capacity to Microsoft. However, the company has faced challenges: a partnership with OpenAI was paused because of high energy costs, and last month reports indicated that its UK data centre will be delayed due to grid problems.
Nscale has positioned itself as part of a push to reduce Europe's reliance on foreign computing power. "We definitely want to support the UK AI ecosystem," Imran Shafi, Nscale's UK managing director, said earlier this month as the company announced it would provide compute to several British universities. "We're a UK headquartered company that matters a lot to us."
Other European AI companies are taking similar steps; Paris-based model maker Mistral is seeking to build its own local data centres with backing from companies such as ASML.