Nscale, the Nvidia-backed data center developer, is in talks to sell Anthropic a second block of AI computing capacity worth about $45 billion, a source told Reuters on 19 October. Bloomberg reported it first. The deal would cover a second building at Nscale's Monarch campus in West Virginia, delivering 460MW on Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips.
It would follow an August agreement of about $45 billion over six years for roughly the same amount of power at Monarch, with capacity expected in late 2027. Monarch's first phase is designed for 1.35GW, so that first deal took about a third. Anthropic also holds a right of first refusal on a third building, and Nscale's contracted value has grown from $100 million to more than $103 billion in two and a half years.
Illustration of the Anthropic logo above a computer keyboard, taken 19 October
Reuters-Yonhap · Image: The Korea Times
Some of that capacity was once earmarked for Microsoft, which signed a letter of intent in March for up to 1.35GW at Monarch and later left it. Microsoft also pulled out of an anchor deal for another Nscale site after power connection delays pushed its supply date into the 2030s.
About Nscale
Nscale is an AI data center and cloud developer headquartered in London, founded in 2024 by the Australian Josh Payne. It spun out of Arkon Energy, a Melbourne infrastructure business, and began with a hydropower-powered site in Glomfjord, Norway.
It closed a $155 million Series A in December 2024, then raised $1.1 billion in Series B funding in September 2025, with backers including Aker, Nvidia, Nokia and Dell. The larger Series B came nine months after the Series A, in a company then less than two years old.
The source said the talks are continuing with no final decision, and details could change; Anthropic did not respond to Reuters. The news came as debt-fuelled AI infrastructure drew scrutiny, with CoreWeave's shares sliding last week over its $50 billion debt load. Its prospectus names Microsoft and Anthropic as expected major customers, a US IPO of up to $3 billion has been reported, and Nebius, Crusoe and Lambda are named as rivals.