Anthropic agrees $45bn AI data centre deal with UK start-up Nscale

Anthropic has struck a deal with UK cloud computing start-up Nscale to rent capacity from its flagship data centre in West Virginia in an agreement worth roughly $45bn over six years.

The tie-up adds to a web of deals for processing power the AI lab has rapidly woven together as it races to keep pace with surging demand ahead of an initial public offering planned for this autumn.

Anthropic will begin accessing 460 megawatts of Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin processors at the facility when the chips come online late next year, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The company has recently signed computing agreements with Amazon and SpaceX and has raised tens of billions of dollars this year, largely to fund infrastructure. It has also held early talks with Meta about renting its computing power in what could be a multibillion-dollar deal.

The maker of the Claude chatbot has separately committed to lease more than $150bn of Google’s AI chips, housed in data centres built specifically for them.

Anthropic’s latest deal highlights how, despite spending tens of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure, the company is still scrambling to secure enough computing power to support demand for its frontier models and AI services.

Nscale, which is also preparing an IPO that could come as soon as next month, raised $2bn in March at a $14.6bn valuation in a round led by Norwegian energy group Aker and 8090 Industries, with backing from Nvidia, Dell and Nokia, among others.

Former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta executive, are members of the group’s board.

The company is working to build a 1.35GW data centre in Mason County, West Virginia, with a 2GW natural gas power plant on site to supply the facility, which Nscale has estimated will cost $69bn. It also has a data centre campus in Norway under way that is expected to be used by OpenAI, among its more than a dozen data centre projects.

Like many AI data centre projects, the 2,250-acre development in West Virginia has drawn pushback from locals concerned about noise and other impacts from construction.

Nscale this month published a report prepared by EY on the economic benefits of the project. The consultants estimated the data centre would bring 2,090 jobs and $395mn in annual GDP contributions to Mason County when it begins operating, representing 36 per cent of the county’s entire economic output.

Bloomberg first reported the Nscale-Anthropic deal.