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AI Cloud Startup Nscale Closes $2B Series C Funding
Nscale has closed a $2 billion Series C, the largest in European history, valuing the UK-based AI infrastructure hyperscaler at $14.6 billion.
The UK-based AI infrastructure hyperscaler is now valued at $14.6 billion. Sheryl Sandberg, Nick Clegg, and Susan Decker join its board. The round was led by Aker ASA and 8090 Industries, with NVIDIA, Citadel, Dell, and Jane Street among the participants.
Nscale has closed a $2 billion Series C, the largest in European history, valuing the UK-based AI infrastructure hyperscaler at $14.6 billion. The round was led by Aker ASA and 8090 Industries, with participation from Astra Capital Management, Citadel, Dell, Jane Street, Lenovo, Linden Advisors, Nokia, NVIDIA, and Point72. Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan acted as joint placement agents.
The capital will go toward accelerating Nscale’s global build-out of vertically integrated AI infrastructure, GPU compute, networking, data services, and orchestration software, across Europe, North America, and Asia. Nscale currently operates data centres in Norway and the UK, with partner-run facilities in Portugal and Iceland, and additional sites across Scandinavia, the UK, and the US.
This is the fourth industrial revolution; the world is changing at a rapid pace. Over the next 5 years, Artificial Intelligence will be integrated into every industry, every product, and every job. Accelerating drug discovery, extending human life, autonomizing travel and robotics, lifting productivity, and driving massive growth. This is leading to the largest infrastructure buildout in human history.
Josh Payne, CEO and Founder of Nscale.
“Nscale is leading this buildout. We are building this foundation that the market sits on, the engine of superintelligence,” said Payne.
Three significant board appointments accompany the raise. Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Meta and early Google executive, joins as a director. Susan Decker, former President of Yahoo and current board member at Berkshire Hathaway and Costco, also joins. The third appointment is Nick Clegg, former UK Deputy Prime Minister, former President of Global Affairs at Meta, and current General Partner at Hiro Capital, who brings regulatory and policy depth at a moment when AI governance is accelerating globally.
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Alongside the Series C, Nscale has absorbed the Aker Nscale joint venture, announced in July 2025, fully into its own structure. Aker remains a leading shareholder, and its CEO Øyvind Eriksen continues on the board. The move consolidates delivery and governance under one entity while keeping existing Norwegian projects operational. “This step strengthens execution by putting delivery and governance under one roof,” Eriksen said.
Rayyan Islam, Co-founder and General Partner of 8090 Industries, framed the investment in terms of infrastructure scarcity. “The limiting factor is infrastructure. Compute, energy, and industrial-scale deployment capacity will determine which nations and companies lead the next generation of technological and economic progress,” he said.
The round arrives as demand for sovereign and independent AI compute continues to build outside the US hyperscaler duopoly. Nscale’s vertical integration, owning the stack from energy and data centres through to compute and orchestration, is the architectural argument it is making to enterprises that need production-grade AI at scale and cannot or will not rely on the largest American cloud providers to deliver it.
This article is based on a press release published by Nscale on March 9, 2026. Quotes are reproduced directly from the release.
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