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Nscale eyes IPO amid fresh $14 billion deal with Microsoft
Nscale, the UK-headquartered AI infrastructure provider.
Courtesy: Nscale
AI cloud company Nscale is eyeing an IPO, the company confirmed to CNBC Wednesday as it announced a $14-billion deal with U.S. tech giant Microsoft.
The London-based company, which provides technology infrastructure to help AI scale, has “public market ambitions” which could be realized in the “back end of next year,” Chief Executive Josh Payne told the Financial Times on Wednesday.
A company spokesperson declined to comment on where the company is considering listing.
On Wednesday Nscale announced an “expanded partnership” with Microsoft, netting the younger company $14 billion, a figure first reported by the Financial Times and verified by CNBC.
Microsoft will purchase around 200,000 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs from Nscale, inclusive of 75,000 GPUs for projects in Norway and the U.K. that were previously announced, putting the total deal worth at around $23 billion, according to CNBC calculations based on previous annoucements.
A company spokesperson declined to comment on the value of the deals.
It comes less than a month after Nscale announced a $433 million funding around, which itself came hot on the heels of a $1.1 billion financing that is considered to be the largest Series B in Europe. Its investors include other technology heavyweights such as Dell, NVIDIA and Nokia, as well as asset manager Blue Owl Managed Funds.
Founded in 2018, Nscale’s pace of development speaks to the wider fervor around AI and the race to build out infrastructure that can support it. In both the public and private markets, fears of a bubble have emerged as investors pile-in on AI-related stocks and startups.
Nscale, however, shows no signs of slowing down. “We’re always in touch with investors about future opportunities,” a company spokesperson said.
