Nscale Ltd., the AI cloud computing firm, is in talks to sell computing power to Anthropic PBC in a deal that could be worth about $45 billion, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
The Nvidia Corp.-backed data center developer is seeking a second major deal with the firm behind Claude for a second facility at its Monarch data center campus in West Virginia, the people said. Anthropic has agreements in place with Nscale for infrastructure that's worth as much as about $44.6 billion, according to a regulatory filing for Nscale's planned initial public offering.
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The second Monarch building would deliver 460 megawatts of computing power, using Nvidia's advanced Vera Rubin AI chips, some of the people said. Anthropic also has the right of first refusal on Monarch's expected third building, they said.
A deal could be finalized as soon as in the coming days, the people said, asking not to be identified as the discussions are private. Deliberations are ongoing, details of the plan could change and no final decisions have been made, the people said. Representatives for Anthropic and Nscale declined to comment.
Another multibillion-dollar computing deal would bolster Nscale's IPO prospects as it seeks about a $30 billion valuation in its market debut. A cohort of investors urged the firm to lower its IPO valuation target, Bloomberg News has reported.
Anthropic, which is one of Nscale's biggest customers, has emerged as a major client for data center providers in general. Deals it has inked include a $50 billion pact with Fluidstack Ltd., $10 billion with infrastructure startup Volta Infrastructure Holdings Ltd. and $45 billion with Elon Musk's SpaceX.
Nscale's Monarch campus in West Virginia is scalable to more than 8 gigawatts of gross power when complete, the IPO filing documents show.
Part of the Monarch campus was initially expected to be leased by Microsoft Corp., which had announced in March it signed a letter of intent for the planned data center. But Microsoft walked away from the West Virginia site in the summer, allowing Anthropic to become the tenant, Bloomberg News reported.
Anthropic, which was valued at $965 billion in May, is expected to conduct its own potentially record-breaking IPO in the coming months, and continues to hunt for more computing power to keep growing.
Investors have grown increasingly wary of the vast sums being borrowed to finance the AI data center boom, souring on everything from chipmakers' stocks to the debt of cloud-computing firms.
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Nscale filed publicly for a US listing in September, and has yet to begin formal marketing even though the required 15 day waiting period has elapsed. The company is working through comments from the US Securities and Exchange Commission on its filing, and intends to kick off marketing when those are resolved, people familiar with the matter have said.
The company raised $3.36 billion in a pre-IPO financing round last month in a deal led by Dan Loeb's Third Point with investors including Nvidia, Apollo Global Management Inc., Citadel, Hudson Bay Capital and Abu Dhabi Investment Council participating.
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