British AI infrastructure firm Nscale just closed one of the largest Series B rounds in European tech history, raising $1.1 billion with backing from Nvidia, Nokia, and Dell. The London-based company is racing to deploy GPU-powered data centers across Europe as demand for AI computing infrastructure hits fever pitch, with plans to house over 130,000 Nvidia GPUs by 2027.
Nscale just landed the kind of funding round that makes Silicon Valley take notice. The British AI infrastructure firm announced Thursday it's raised $1.1 billion in Series B funding, with Nvidia leading a heavyweight investor lineup that includes Nokia, Dell, and Norwegian industrial giant Aker.
The timing couldn't be better. As OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google race to build more powerful AI models, the bottleneck isn't just talent or algorithms - it's raw computing power. Nscale is betting big that Europe needs its own AI computing backbone, and investors are writing massive checks to make it happen.
"We're creating one of the largest global infrastructure platforms of its kind – purpose-built to meet surging demand and unlock breakthroughs at unprecedented scale," CEO Josh Payne told CNBC. That's not just startup hyperbole - the company is committing $1 billion to a single Norwegian data center project that will house 100,000 Nvidia GPUs by 2027.
The scale is staggering. Most AI companies dream of accessing thousands of GPUs; Nscale is planning to deploy over 130,000 across just two sites. The Norwegian facility alone will rival some of the largest AI training clusters in the world, while the UK site will start with 8,000 GPUs early next year before expanding to 31,000.
This isn't Nscale's first rodeo with massive infrastructure projects. The company spun out from Australian crypto mining firm Arkon Energy in 2023, bringing deep expertise in power management and cooling systems - crucial skills when you're running thousands of power-hungry AI chips 24/7. That background is proving invaluable as traditional data center operators struggle to meet AI's unique demands.
The funding comes just weeks after Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI announced multibillion-dollar commitments to UK AI infrastructure, with Nscale as a key partner. The company is directly involved in investment project, which aims to build cutting-edge data centers across Europe.
