Nscale, the UK company that builds and runs data centres and cloud capacity for artificial intelligence, said on 9 March 2026 that it had raised $2bn in a Series C round that values it at $14.6bn.
Aker ASA and 8090 Industries led the round. Astra Capital Management, Citadel, Dell, Jane Street, Lenovo, Linden Advisors, Nokia, NVIDIA and Point72 also took part. The total includes a pre-Series C SAFE (simple agreement for future equity), which The Next Web reported Nscale closed in October 2025; its size was not disclosed.
Nscale called the deal the largest Series C in European history. The Next Web noted that the claim came from the company and said it deserved scrutiny. Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan acted as joint placement agents.
“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, Nscale
What Nscale does
Nscale describes itself as a hyperscaler built for AI. It owns the layers of the stack, from GPU compute and networking to data services and the software that schedules workloads, and designs its own modular data centres. Customers use the capacity to train, fine-tune and run AI models.
The Next Web reported that the company has data centres in Norway, the UK, Portugal, Iceland and the US. It reported large contracts with Microsoft, including a planned site in Texas aimed at 104,000 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs, and said Nscale is a partner with Aker and OpenAI in Stargate Norway, a project announced in July 2025.
The company was incorporated in 2024, according to The Next Web; UKTN, which described it as London-based, said it was founded in 2023. Josh Payne is founder and chief executive.
Board changes and the Aker joint venture
Three directors joined the board with the round: Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Meta; Susan Decker, a former president of Yahoo; and Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister and former head of global affairs at Meta, who is now a general partner at Hiro Capital. They join Payne, Rael Nurick, Jacob Leschly and Aker chief executive Øyvind Eriksen.
Nscale also agreed with Aker to fold the Aker Nscale joint venture, announced in July 2025, fully into the company. Aker will remain a leading shareholder. Nscale said projects under the joint venture would continue and that its commitments on waste-heat reuse, local skills and regional infrastructure in Norway were unchanged.
"This step strengthens execution by putting delivery and governance under one roof," Eriksen said.
What the money is for
Nscale said the capital would expand its AI infrastructure across Europe, North America and Asia, enlarge its engineering and operations teams and strengthen its platform. It argued that the limit on growth in AI is not demand but the ability to build capacity and run it reliably.
The company has raised capital quickly. Its Series B of $1.1bn closed in September 2025; Aker, which committed $285m in cash and land in Narvik, said it took a 9.3% stake on a fully diluted basis. The Next Web reported that Aker led that round, that Nscale had raised more than $4.5bn in equity in under six months, and that it announced a $1.4bn delayed-draw term loan backed by GPUs in February 2026. It also noted that Payne had raised the possibility of a stock market listing as early as 2026.
Nscale did not disclose its headcount.
Company website: nscale.com