Nscale lines up $3.36bn convertible financing before its NYSE listing

Nscale has raised $3.36 billion in convertible financing just days after filing paperwork for a US stock market listing. The London-based AI infrastructure company said the notes, led by hedge fund Third Point, will convert into equity once its initial public offering closes.

The deal gives Nscale $2.36 billion it can draw immediately, with a further $1 billion pledged by Nvidia, already a backer of the company, due to arrive in mid-November. For a firm that has raised roughly $3 billion in equity over the past year alone, it is another sign of how much cash it takes to build data centres for AI at the pace big cloud and chip customers now expect.

A funding base ahead of the float

Reporting on the round named a long list of additional participants alongside Third Point and Nvidia, including funds tied to Apollo, Citadel, Hudson Bay Capital, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council and 8090 Industries, plus Davidson Kempner Capital Management, Qube Research & Technologies, Wellington Management and several smaller investment firms. That breadth suggests Nscale wanted financing in place and locked in before public markets have their say on price.

The convertible structure means none of this is straightforward equity for now. Investors get notes that turn into shares automatically once the IPO completes, a common way for late-stage private companies to raise money without setting a valuation months before a listing actually prices.

The company is reportedly aiming for the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NSCL. Press reports citing the Financial Times and Bloomberg put the planned offering at around $3 billion in new equity, with a valuation near $35 billion. Those numbers would mark a sharp jump from the roughly $14.6 billion valuation attached to its Series C round in March.

From Arkon Energy to a full-stack AI cloud

Josh Payne founded Nscale in 2024, after building companies in recruitment, capital markets and crypto-mining infrastructure, including Bitcoin-mining firm Arkon Energy. The company grew out of that earlier venture, pivoting from mining hardware toward AI compute as demand for GPU capacity took off.

The company has since built what it calls a vertically integrated stack: it owns or controls energy supply, data centres, GPU clusters and the software layer on top, rather than renting capacity from others. That model has supported a rapid run of fundraising, from a $155 million Series A to an $1.1 billion Series B in September 2025, billed at the time as the largest in European history, and then the $2 billion Series C six months later.

Alongside Payne, the leadership team now includes chief financial officer Alice Takhtajan and chief operating officer Justin Osofsky. Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta chief operating officer, joined Nscale's board earlier this year.

What the money has to cover

The new financing, the company says, will go toward expanding data centres, power infrastructure and GPU clusters, the same categories that have consumed its previous rounds. It is currently building large campuses in Norway and West Virginia, part of a broader push to put AI compute closer to European and American customers who want dedicated capacity rather than shared cloud slots.

Its IPO filings state that it has built up contracts worth more than $103 billion since splitting off from Arkon Energy two years ago. That figure points to heavy forward commitments from customers even as the company keeps raising fresh capital to build the infrastructure those contracts require.

For European founders watching the AI infrastructure race, Nscale's path is a reminder of the capital intensity involved: billions raised in under two years, a vertically integrated bet on owning power and compute rather than leasing it, and a listing that will test whether public investors value that approach as richly as private ones have. Whether the IPO prices anywhere near the reported $35 billion mark will be the next marker to watch.