British hyperscaler Nscale raises €936 million in milestone for European AI infrastructure

Nscale, the London-based hyperscaler engineered for AI, today announced it has raised the largest Series B in UK and European history, at €936 million to challenge established global cloud providers and accelerate European sovereign AI infrastructure deployment.

The financing was led by Aker ASA, with continued support from existing shareholders, including Sandton Capital, and participation from Blue Owl Managed Funds, Dell, Fidelity Management & Research Company, G Squared, Nokia, NVIDIA, Point72 and T.Capital.

“We are building the AI-native Infrastructure platform of tomorrow,” said Josh Payne, CEO of Nscale. “AI is reshaping industries, economies, and national strategies – but it cannot happen without the physical backbone: the data centres, the GPUs and the software to orchestrate them. We are building a vertically integrated, AI-engineered foundation designed to power the next generation of technological change, enabling industries and innovators across the globe to achieve what today feels impossible.”

Founded in 2024, Nscale is an AI-native infrastructure platform, providing vertically integrated compute, networking, storage, managed software and AI services delivered in Nscale-owned and colocated data centres.

It addresses the surging enterprise demand for GPUs – the engines driving AI in one of the fastest-growing infrastructure markets. Anchored in Europe, its strategically located data centres harness some of the lowest-cost renewable energy in the world, allowing Nscale to pass these significant savings directly to customers while meeting stringent regulatory requirements.

From large-scale hubs in Norway to smaller metro clusters designed for latency-sensitive workloads, its next-generation facilities can reportedly be delivered more quickly and at a lower cost than the industry benchmarks.

“AI is reshaping the global economy and redefining the value of renewable energy. With Nscale, we’re backing infrastructure that’s sovereign, scalable and purpose-built to accelerate this transformation. Nscale’s full-stack, GPU-first model gives it a real edge in execution. The scale and quality of this Series B round are a testament to Nscale’s vision and momentum – and to the strength of our collaboration.

“Through both our Series B investment and joint venture, we’re making a significant, long-term commitment to building industrial relevance in the age of AI,” said Øyvind Eriksen, President & CEO, Aker AS.

Nscale’s Series B is surprising in scale relative to other European infrastructure-oriented funding in 2025. The closest peers in visibility – DataCrunch (Series A, €55 million) and platform/photonics plays like €50 million for Scintil and the €62 million for Q.ANT – operate several orders of magnitude below.

The recent deals reflect strong investor interest across adjacent layers of the AI compute stack: from smarter energy management (€2 million for Zendo Energy) and operational tooling (2.5 million for Opper AI) to optical/photonic components (Scintil, Q.ANT).

But none match the ambition or scale of full-stack hyperscale AI infrastructure.

If Nscale successfully executes, it may reshape the European competitive landscape in sovereign AI infrastructure. It also highlights how capital is flowing deeper into the physical backbone of AI, not just software or models.

“Over just a few months, Nscale has moved with focus and velocity – turning ambitious plans into production capacity and becoming meaningfully relevant, fast. The team is building massive-scale, sovereign infrastructure that enterprises and nations can actually consume – reliable, efficient, and close to their data.

“We’re excited to support Josh and the Nscale team as they scale with discipline, equip builders with infrastructure, and establish a strategic foundation for national AI leadership,” added Larry Aschebrook, Founder & Managing Partner, G Squared.

The new funding will be used to further Nscale’s deployment of large-scale AI infrastructure across Europe, North America and the Middle East, enabling the rapid rollout of the company’s “AI factory” data centres for projects like Stargate UK and Stargate Norway, and the expansion of its vertically integrated AI cloud platform.

This capital will accelerate the expansion of its engineering and operations teams, and strengthen delivery for enterprise and government customers worldwide.  

“We are creating one of the largest global platforms of its kind – purpose-built to meet surging demand and unlock breakthroughs at unprecedented scale. This allows Nscale to provide our customers access to scarce, and highly sought after, compute capacity and rapidly accelerate the build-out of secure, compliant and energy-efficient AI infrastructure. 

“Europe needs a Hyperscaler, and Nscale is rising to the challenge,” commented Payne.

Backed by a leadership team that has built over 50 data centres, developed leading supercomputing platforms, negotiated large-scale technology contracts and scaled multi-billion-dollar infrastructure businesses, Nscale says it combines one of the world’s largest GPU pipelines with the proven expertise to deliver at global scale.

In parallel to the delivery of physical AI infrastructure, Nscale is accelerating product innovation across the AI stack: launching a fine-tuning service, advanced inference APIs, an AI Studio, robust orchestration tools and private cloud enhancements.

“Demand for the build-out of secure, scalable AI infrastructure in Europe and across the world continues to accelerate. Nokia is participating in Nscale’s investment round and announcing a partnership with Nscale to combine our expertise in IP and optical networking with their leading infrastructure platform, enabling the innovation needed for the future of AI infrastructure,” said Justin Hotard, President and CEO, Nokia.

The raise follows the recent announcement of Nscale’s UK AI infrastructure commitment. Together with Microsoft, it announced its plans to develop the UK’s largest AI supercomputer on Nscale’s AI Campus in Loughton.

Separately, Nscale, OpenAI and NVIDIA announced they are together establishing Stargate UK, an overarching infrastructure platform designed to deploy OpenAI’s technology in the UK, with a particular focus on sovereign workloads.

In July, Nscale announced the launch of Stargate Norway, its landmark partnership with Aker ASA and OpenAI to launch Europe’s first hyperscale AI with a target to deliver 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs by the end of 2026.

Two months later, the Nscale-Aker joint venture deepened this momentum with a multi-billion-dollar agreement with Microsoft to deliver AI infrastructure in Narvik, Norway. Looking ahead, Nscale will expand its relationship with Dell Technologies, using Dell AI infrastructure to further support sovereign AI efforts in Europe.

“The future of AI hinges on empowering every nation to innovate securely, independently and on its own terms. We help transform sovereign ambition into global impact by delivering the foundational infrastructure and services needed to realise this vision. Through Dell’s strategic investment and the power of our AI solutions, Nscale is building tailored platforms that drive meaningful progress for citizens and industries worldwide,” commented Adrian McDonald, President, EMEA, Dell Technologies.

Nscale’s Series B comes against a backdrop of accelerating European policy efforts to assert AI sovereignty. The European Commission’s AI Continent Action Plan, unveiled in April 2025, explicitly aims to triple the bloc’s AI compute capacity and promote a “European preference” in infrastructure procurement. In parallel, the EU’s AI Act, which entered into force in August 2024, imposes uniform obligations on high-risk AI systems – including in cloud, data centre, and infrastructure domains – thereby reinforcing standards around trust, accountability, and control.

On the UK side, the government has launched a Sovereign AI Unit, backed by up to £500 million, to build homegrown compute, data, and model capabilities and reduce reliance on foreign providers.

“The success of UK-founded companies like Nscale shows how our country can be at the cutting edge of AI. By attracting global expertise and investment, it is building the essential infrastructure for the UK to compete internationally, drive growth, and create jobs across the country,” added UK AI Minister, Kanishka Narayan.

EU-Startups previously covered Nscale’s growth trajectory, reporting on its €146 million Series A in December 2024 to support AI infrastructure expansion. We also highlighted Nscale in our 2025 “AI startups to watch” roundup, positioning the company among Europe’s most significant players in the evolving AI ecosystem.

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