Microsoft confirmed on 19 October that it has withdrawn from a lease on capacity at Nscale's planned data centre in Loughton, Essex, as the Telegraph first reported. Grid officials reportedly told Nscale the site would get no power until the 2030s.
“a substantial portion of our committed revenue is driven by a limited number of customers with large contracts”
Nscale IPO filing, in its IPO filing, as reported by CTV News · ctvnews.ca ↗
The site was to open early next year with 23,040 Nvidia GB300 chips and 50 megawatts for Microsoft's Azure in Britain, though a source said it was only a small part of the companies' contracts. It was announced during Trump's September 2025 UK state visit, when Keir Starmer, then prime minister, called it the largest sovereign AI data centre in the country.
A Microsoft logo on a company office building, file picture
REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes · Image: The Star
Microsoft said the decision covers one site and it still backs the partnership. Nscale said it stays committed to Loughton and the UK, is exploring other power sources and sites, and blamed a London-wide grid issue. UK Power Networks said local connections often wait on national transmission works it does not run.
About Nscale
Nscale is a British technology company, founded in London in May 2024 by Josh Payne, that operates data centres and GPU cloud infrastructure for AI. It spun out of Arkon Energy, a Melbourne-based infrastructure business.
It closed a $155 million Series A in December 2024 and in July 2025 formed a joint venture with Aker for an AI infrastructure project in Narvik, Norway, with Microsoft as anchor customer. It raised $1.1 billion in a Series B in September 2025, and in October 2025 agreed to supply Microsoft with more than 200,000 Nvidia chips. A $2 billion Series C in March 2026 valued it at $14.6 billion.
Nscale filed for a US IPO last month, reportedly seeking up to a $35bn valuation, with contracted value up from $100m to over $103bn in about two and a half years. Its filing names Microsoft and Anthropic as main customers. Earlier this year OpenAI also withdrew from a UK Stargate project with Nscale and Nvidia, British media reported.
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