Nscale, a London-based AI hyperscaler, has successfully raised $155m in one of the UK’s largest Series A funding rounds this year.
- The company aims to expand its data centre capacity significantly, deploying closed-loop direct liquid cooling technology.
- Investments target rapid growth across Europe and North America, with plans to increase from 300MW to 1.3GW.
- Nscale plans to launch a new public cloud service, offering tailored inference and training solutions for AI development.
- The funding was led by Sandton Capital Partners, with participation from several other prominent investors.
Nscale, an artificial intelligence hyperscaler based in London, has secured $155 million in one of the UK’s highest Series A funding rounds for the year. The company, which emerged from stealth mode in May 2024, is positioning itself to support the growing demand for compute power required by AI scale-ups.
The firm’s strategic focus is on designing data centre sites for supercluster deployments globally. By integrating closed-loop direct liquid cooling technology, Nscale aims to enhance performance and efficiency while reducing environmental impact. This funding is intended to accelerate the company’s growth, expanding its greenfield data centres across Europe and North America from the current 300MW to a projected 1.3GW. A development goal of 120MW is set for 2025.
Nscale distinguishes itself with its capability to deploy bespoke GPU clusters that meet specific customer needs with greater speed than its competitors, and at any required scale. The company asserts it offers better unit economics, which is a significant competitive advantage.
In addition to expanding its infrastructure, Nscale intends to introduce a public cloud service early next year. This service will aim to provide developers with access to specialised inference and training solutions within a flexible development environment.
The recent funding round was led by Sandton Capital Partners, with additional investments from Kestrel 0x1, Blue Sky Capital Managers Ltd, and Florence Capital. Notably, Philippe Sachs, the general partner at Kestrel, also chairs Nscale. CEO Joshua Payne stated, “The AI market is scaling rapidly, and so are we. 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.”
Commenting on the investment, Rael Nurick, Co-Founder at Sandton Capital Partners, expressed excitement to further invest in Nscale, acknowledging its notable founding history, industry partnerships, and vertically integrated approach as key strengths in building a hyperscale AI platform to power enterprise AI at scale.
Nscale’s significant funding underlines its ambitious plans for expansion and innovation in the AI infrastructure industry.
