Anthropic and Nscale Near a Second $45 Billion Compute Deal

By Daniel Okafor

Anthropic and Nscale are close to signing a second $45 billion compute deal, barely a month after announcing their first one, according to Bloomberg. The report cites people familiar with the matter. Those sources cautioned that talks are still under way and that the details could change.

The math is blunt. Two deals of $45 billion each would put $90 billion in contracted compute commitments between the two companies. The first arrangement, announced a little over a month ago, was itself one of the largest AI infrastructure agreements on record. A second would double that exposure in a single quarter.

What does a second deal signal?

If completed, the agreement would extend a long string of giant compute deals Anthropic has struck over the past year. TechCrunch reached out to Nscale and Anthropic for more information and said it will update its story if it hears back.

The mechanism matters here. Anthropic rents GPU capacity to train and run its Claude models. Nscale builds and operates the data centers that supply that capacity. Multi-year commitments of this size let Anthropic lock in compute before demand pushes prices higher, and give Nscale the revenue certainty it needs to finance new facilities.

The risk sits on both sides of the ledger. The massive amount of money flowing into AI compute deals has spooked a certain segment of investors, who worry that companies are spending too much money for too little profit. Anthropic has pressed on anyway, driven by the belief that the spending will pay off in the end.

Where do the IPOs stand?

Both companies are pursuing public listings at the same time. Anthropic is still expected to go public this year, according to the reporting. Nscale is also seeking to go public, though Bloomberg reported that the company is experiencing investor pushback over its proposed valuation of $30 billion.

That pushback is the tension worth watching. Public-market investors are being asked to underwrite a $30 billion valuation for a company whose growth case rests on contracts like the Anthropic deal, while the same investors express doubt about whether AI compute spending will return enough profit to justify itself. A signed second agreement would hand Nscale a concrete revenue anchor for its listing pitch.

Why the timing raises stakes

The sequence compresses. A $45 billion deal announced in one month, a second $45 billion deal reportedly near, and two IPO processes running in parallel — all within a single year in which investors have grown openly nervous about AI capital spending. Anthropic's bet is that compute bought today at scale beats compute bought later at a premium. Nscale's bet is that hyperscale contracts convert into bankable infrastructure returns.

Neither company has confirmed the new talks. The sources told Bloomberg the details could still change, which means the figure, the structure, or the deal itself may look different at announcement. What is clear is the direction: Anthropic keeps buying capacity in record-size increments, and its infrastructure partners keep raising capital against those commitments. The second $45 billion, if it lands, will test whether investors reward that strategy or keep pushing back on the valuations built on top of it.