Potential Nvidia Support for Nscale Debt Exceeds $5 Billion for 460-Megawatt Data Center
Key Facts
Nvidia is in talks to provide credit guarantees for Nscale debt tied to the development of a 460-megawatt data center in West Virginia that Anthropic plans to use, according to a report by The Information on October 29. The report estimated the potential support at more than $5 billion, based on industry estimates of the cost of building a powered data center. No support agreement has been signed, and its terms could change. The discussions come as cloud computing companies seek to finance large facilities to meet demand for AI infrastructure. The report links Nvidia’s potential role to construction and power financing, alongside its position as a supplier of chips used in these facilities.
The center covered by The Information is tied to Anthropic’s contract for the first building at the Monarch campus in West Virginia, according to a correction to the report. That is separate from a second building on the same campus: Reuters reported on October 19 that Nscale and Anthropic were negotiating over another 460-megawatt facility using Nvidia’s Vera Rubin chips. The agency said talks were ongoing and details could change. The matching capacity means the two projects share the same announced scale, but does not make them the same building. Discussions over the second building place Anthropic’s expansion at the campus on a separate track from the debt support linked to the first building.
Nscale signed four separate agreements on August 25 to provide services to Anthropic, with total payments potentially reaching about $44.6 billion, according to the company’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Payments are tied to delivery requirements and service availability, so their potential value depends on completing and operating the necessary infrastructure. In the same filing, Nscale said it had not, as of the filing date, secured binding financing commitments to fund execution of those agreements, and that the required financing remained in progress. This puts the financing arrangement at the center of the company’s ability to meet its contractual obligations. Available information does not disclose the terms of Nvidia’s potential guarantees or how they would relate to other facilities Nscale is seeking.
Nscale’s financial results show a widening gap between the value of announced contracts and recent realized revenue. Revenue reached $140.6 million in the first half of 2026, compared with $10.4 million in the corresponding period of 2025, an annual increase of 1,252%, according to the company’s filing. Nscale said revenue growth reflected the expansion of its business, while new contracts require it to deliver computing capacity and bring it online for customers. On August 31, the company announced the closing of commitments totaling about $3 billion through two delayed-draw facilities for GPU infrastructure projects in the United States. The financing includes up to $1.85 billion for the Ward County site in Texas and up to $1.2 billion for the Madison site in North Carolina.
Nscale’s discussions are part of a broader effort to finance AI infrastructure. In a statement issued on August 10, Nvidia said memorandums of understanding with financing parties aimed to establish independent platforms to mobilize more than $500 billion in external capital over time. But it said in its disclosure that preliminary arrangements might not turn into definitive agreements, and that it could, at its discretion, provide limited residual-value support for some projects after assessing each project and managing risks. Nvidia’s commitments related to AI cloud service agreements also totaled $36 billion as of July 26, 2026, and the agreements typically ran for six years, according to its quarterly report. This reflects the scale of financing commitments surrounding the expansion of computing capacity, without implying that Nscale’s potential guarantee is part of those platforms.
Power and the timing of operations remain constraints on expansion plans. Reuters reported that Microsoft withdrew from an agreement to be the anchor tenant at Nscale’s Essex data center after being told that electricity supply to the site might not begin until the 2030s. Microsoft said its decision concerned one site. Separately, Reuters reported that Nscale increased the total value of its contracts from $100 million to more than $103 billion over two and a half years, and that Microsoft and Anthropic were candidates to become among its largest customers in the future. Nvidia shares closed at $213.66 on October 29, compared with $215.38 in the previous session, according to EL7 data, which did not attribute the share move to the guarantee news.
In a subsequent financing development, Nscale announced on September 25 that it had raised $3.36 billion through convertible loan notes, including an additional $1 billion commitment from Nvidia, expected to be funded in mid-November 2026. That commitment is on a separate financing track from the debt guarantees covered in the October 29 report, and the terms of those guarantees have not been announced. The expected funding date in mid-November is the next dated milestone in the available information on Nvidia’s additional commitment. The credit support under discussion remains unsigned, according to the report. The Anthropic agreements remain tied to execution financing, delivery and service availability.