Nvidia is investing in and creating AI data center companies following the CoreWeave growth model

Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang has emerged as a key booster of "neocloud" startups, with Nscale emerging as one of the biggest winners from the $200 billion of deals announced during President Donald Trump's state visit to the United Kingdom. Nscale, a London-based startup that pivoted from crypto mining to powering data centers for artificial intelligence companies, has landed a $500 million investment from Nvidia and secured a deal with the chip giant and OpenAI to build one of its massive "Stargate" data centers in the U.K. Speaking in London on Thursday night alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Huang name-checked Nscale CEO Josh Payne, saying: "I've never seen a startup take off like that before." Huang noted that "three months ago, when I met Josh, they were zero billion dollars [revenue]. Today, Josh is zero billion dollars [revenue], but with potential. In just three months, we have helped Josh set up Nscale and they are underway to scaling up to 300,000 GPUs around the world…and 60,000 here in the U.K."

This buildout would put Nscale on par with Nasdaq-listed CoreWeave, which claimed to be operating around 250,000 GPUs when it went public in March. CoreWeave's stock market value has leapt to $60 billion since then, having itself pivoted from crypto mining just six years prior. Huang appears to harbor even more ambitious plans for Nscale. In a video shared on LinkedIn, Huang handed Nscale's CEO a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky with the inscription: "Zero to $50 billion in 18 months." Nvidia and Nscale declined to comment on the timeframe for deploying 300,000 GPUs, achieving this valuation, or the company's current valuation at the time of the $500 million investment.

In an August interview with Forbes, Nscale CEO Payne reported the company had 40 megawatts of AI capacity online, said it currently operates exclusively in Norway with deployments planned in about five countries over the next six months and intentions to be in about 15 European countries within two years. This capacity is far less than rival CoreWeave which has 1.3 gigawatts of capacity and announced plans for its own U.K. datacenter, while Amsterdam-listed Nebius said it had plans to access over 1 gigawatt of electricity by the end of 2026. In July, Nscale broke into the big leagues with a deal to build OpenAI's first "Stargate" AI data center in Norway's Arctic circle as part of an agreement with Norwegian billionaire Kjell Inge Røkke's Aker industrial conglomerate. Separately, Nscale signed a deal with Microsoft to lease an unfinished 50 megawatt data centre in south west England purchased months earlier. These projects are a fraction of the size of the original "Stargate" project—a 4.5 gigawatt data center that OpenAI is building in Abilene, Texas with Oracle and Crusoe.

Nscale's origins trace to August 2023 when it was spun out from Australian crypto miner Arkon Energy, which had flirted with a SPAC listing. The company was left with a data center in the remote northern Norwegian town of Glomfjord—like CoreWeave and Crusoe, retooled from crypto mining to powering AI. Nscale raised $155 million from investors in December 2024, with some financing coming from convertible notes listed on the International Stock Exchange Group. The company recruited data center veterans from Iron Mountain, Google and Amazon Web Services, along with Imran Shafi, the British government's former director of AI opportunities. According to a Nscale spokesperson: "Nscale has multiple data centres including Nscale owned and colocated. Due to security and client sensitivities, we do not share the details of our full global footprint."

Despite its Australian origins and backing from mostly American opportunistic hedge fund investors, Nscale is positioning itself as a European "sovereign" alternative to Silicon Valley's hyper-scalers. "Europe lacks AI infrastructure that's European sovereign, that's something we're working fiercely to solve," said Payne. Nvidia's broader U.K. bet is significant—Huang announced plans to invest over $2.7 billion in digital bank Revolut, self-driving car Wayve and other British startups, with Nscale representing one of the most tangible investments to date from the chip giant's promise to support British AI innovation.