Nscale, a UK-based AI-centric hyperscale infrastructure, has landed $155 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Sandton Capital Partners, alongside Kestrel, Bluesky Asset Management, and Florence Capital. This investment comes just months after it emerges from stealth and it is one of the largest Series A funding rounds in the UK.
This follows the recent investments in LogicMonitor, Crusoe Energy, and Lumen Orbit.
The oversubscribed funding will be used to accelerate the company’s growth across Europe and North America. It will also speed up the deployment of large-scale GPU clusters for AI training, fine-tuning, and inferencing workloads. The capital will be used to expand its greenfield data centre sites in Ohio, Texas, the UK, and Norway, with 120MW planned for 2025 development.
What problem does Nscale solve?
Traditional data centres often lack the agility and efficiency required for generative AI and machine learning operations. Furthermore, AI workloads demand immense computational power, often hindered by inefficient infrastructure and environmental concerns.
Nscale was born out of the need for a purpose-built AI hyperscaler, recognising a gap in the market for infrastructure optimised for AI workloads. By integrating data centre design with GPU supercluster architecture, Nscale ensures seamless support for the entire AI lifecycle, from model training to inference.
Sustainable AI-ready data centres
Founded by Josh Payne earlier this year, Nscale comprises a team of seasoned innovators in hyperscale and AI infrastructure. Its proprietary AI cloud platform sets a new standard for computing performance. By offering bare metal and virtualised GPU nodes, Kubernetes-native services (NKS), and advanced AI workload scheduling through SLURM, the platform delivers unmatched speed and efficiency.
Its flagship greenfield data centres, designed with cutting-edge closed-loop direct liquid cooling systems, optimise GPU performance while minimising environmental impact. These facilities are set to scale from 300MW to 1.3GW, reinforcing Nscale’s commitment to sustainability and performance.
With its upcoming public cloud service, Nscale aims to empower developers globally with flexible and scalable tools for AI innovation. With operations spanning Europe and North America, the 60MW renewable energy-powered data centre in Norway is just the beginning. Recent industry accolades, such as the inclusion of Nscale’s Svartisen Cluster in the 2024 Top500 supercomputing systems, reflect its growing influence.
Strategic collaborations
Nscale’s recent partnership with Open Innovation AI, a prominent GPU orchestration platform in MENA, further exemplifies its strategic foresight. Together, they aim to deploy 30,000 GPUs over the next three years, cementing Nscale’s footprint in high-growth regions. This collaboration aligns with its mission to deliver scalable and efficient AI solutions to a rapidly expanding customer base.
What lies ahead for the company?
Looking ahead, Nscale is poised to redefine AI infrastructure with its public cloud service launch in 2025. By combining its technology, sustainability, and strategic global expansion, the company is positioned to dominate the hyperscale AI market. As the demand for generative AI infrastructure continues to soar, its full-stack solution is designed to support the entire generative AI lifecycle.
“The AI market is scaling rapidly, and so are we,” stated Joshua Payne, CEO of Nscale. “Nscale manages every layer of infrastructure in the value chain to meet the intensive needs of large-scale AI customers. In particular, the largest risk to the market’s ability to scale is the large contiguous tranches of electricity required to power these large GPU superclusters. Nscale has a 1.3GW pipeline of sites in our portfolio, which allows us to design from the ground up, the data centre, the supercluster and the cloud environment end-to-end for our customers. This means we can deploy bespoke GPU clusters tailored to customers’ requirements, do this faster than competitors and at any scale, all while delivering superior unit economics. With the support of our investors, we can now reach more customers globally with bespoke designed, sustainable and cost-effective AI infrastructure that unlocks new AI capabilities, products, and services.”
“We are excited to double down on our investment in Nscale with our lead investment in the Series A round,” commented Rael Nurick, Co-Founder at Sandton Capital Partners. “With a notable founder track record, established industry partnerships, and a unique vertically integrated approach, Nscale is building the hyperscale AI platform to power enterprise AI at scale.”
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