Nvidia's $683M Investment in UK's Nscale Marks Major AI Infrastructure Push

Nvidia's UK Partner Is a 16-Month-Old Crypto Mining Spinout

Nscale, a little known British data center company that spun out of a crypto miner last year, has found itself at the forefront of a massive artificial intelligence-fueled data center boom. Nvidia Corp. is investing £500 million ($683 million) in Nscale, Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang told reporters in London on Wednesday, and said the UK-based company would be part of an AI infrastructure buildout valued at as much as £11 billion. OpenAI named it as a partner for Stargate UK, an offshoot of an even larger US effort to increase the capacity to run AI systems. Microsoft Corp. said this week it would rent $6.2 billion in computing power from Nscale in Norway.

AI startup Nscale came out of nowhere and is blowing away Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

Two years ago, Nscale was a brand new startup in the U.K. that had yet to raise any outside funding or officially announce its existence. Last year the London-based company came out of stealth, and in December announced that it had raised its Series A fundraising, totaling $155 million. Now, Nscale finds itself at the center of the action in the hottest market on the planet: artificial intelligence. And it has close to $700 million in fresh capital from Nvidia, the world's most valuable company. In press releases on Tuesday, Nscale was named as an AI infrastructure partner for Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI, as the companies expand their buildouts in the U.K. Nscale then said it signed a five-year $6.2 billion agreement with Microsoft and Aker to develop "hyperscale AI infrastructure" in Europe, specifically Norway, where Aker is headquartered. OpenAI made prior headlines with Nscale, announcing plans in July for a data center in Norway for a Stargate-branded AI data center. Nscale agreed to commit $1 billion for the project, with the goal of racking up 100,000 Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) at the site before 2027. It's a remarkably quick rise for a company that wasn't even around when OpenAI kicked off the generative AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. At that time, what's now Nscale was part of Arkon Energy, which was established a year earlier to provide infrastructure for cryptocurrency mining. Nscale was spun out to address soaring demand for data centers capable of handling AI workloads.

Nvidia partners with UK crypto miner's arm as part of AI push: Report

The reported $683-million investment from Nvidia into Nscale came amid a push by the UK government to develop the country's AI infrastructure. Nvidia, one of the most significant chip designers globally, reportedly announced a $683 million investment in a UK-based AI infrastructure company that spun off from a cryptocurrency miner in 2024. According to a Wednesday Bloomberg report, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the investment in Nscale, the AI arm of crypto mining company Arkon Energy, would be part of efforts to develop the UK's infrastructure around artificial intelligence. Nscale spun off Arkon in May 2024 to offer AI cloud services across Europe. The investment came amid a push by the UK government to develop the country's AI infrastructure. Nvidia said it would partner with Nscale to scale up the UK's capacity to 60,000 GPUs, which will be included in some of Nscale's data centers by 2026. "Sovereign AI infrastructure is key to national resilience, economic growth and strategic autonomy," said Nscale CEO Josh Payne regarding the UK expansion. "This milestone deepens our commitment to providing critical AI infrastructure for the next industrial revolution." Related: Crypto startups no longer welcome in Nvidia's accelerator program In January, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government planned to adopt a plan with 50 recommendations "to capture the opportunities of AI." At the time, Nscale, Vantage Data Centres and Kyndryl committed about a combined $17 billion toward the investment. Headquartered in California, Nvidia beat out all the major tech companies to reach $4 trillion in market capitalization in July. Some experts suggested the surge in stock price behind the milestone was driven by investor confidence in a push toward technologies dealing with AI. The milestone marked Nvidia's valuation just above the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies, which has hovered near $4 trillion since July.