Nscale Files for New York Listing Seeking Up to $35 Billion Valuation

Nscale, the Nvidia-backed "neocloud," has filed for a New York listing at a valuation of up to $35 billion, according to the Financial Times—despite posting a net loss of $1.02 billion in the six months to June 30, 2026.

The London-based company builds or finances AI-ready data centers and rents out the computing power. Founder and CEO Josh Payne runs the two-year-old business, which was spun out of the Australian crypto miner Arkon Energy in 2024. Its board includes former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, and former Yahoo president Susan Decker.

The S-1 filing lays out the scale of the challenge. At one point, per the filing, Nscale's own management flagged "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue as a going concern. Serious questions about losses running ahead of revenue had already surfaced when Fortune profiled the company in June. The new filings show the extent of them.

Nscale is asking Wall Street to value it at as much as $35 billion on the promise that $103 billion in contracts—much of them not yet firm—will convert into revenue on schedule.

Nvidia's deep fingerprints

The S-1 also puts the company's ties to Nvidia front and center. Nvidia is Nscale's biggest supplier, one of its investors, and—depending on how the IPO prices—soon to be one of its largest shareholders. On Sept. 15, Nscale signed a subscription agreement for a $3.1 billion financing round, of which Nvidia itself is taking $1 billion in convertible notes or non-voting shares.

The relationship goes further. Filings from Nscale's U.K. company accounts in October 2025 showed that Nvidia bought warrants for over 157,945 Nscale shares for $60 million—and in exchange agreed to guarantee up to $860.3 million of Nscale's lease obligations at a facility in Ward County, Texas.

Nvidia has been open about propping up companies like Nscale. Back in April, CEO Jensen Huang said, referencing both Nscale and CoreWeave: "If we didn't support CoreWeave to exist, these neoclouds, these AI clouds, wouldn't exist… If we didn't support Nscale, they wouldn't be where they are today."

The extent of Nscale's reliance on Nvidia revives familiar questions about circular financing. The chipmaker provides funding—investment, loans, or loan guarantees—to customers who send the money back through GPU purchases. In some cases, Nvidia also invests in the AI companies buying data center capacity from the neoclouds. In that case, it is Nvidia's money passing from one place to another, leaving outside observers to work out how much of the AI boom reflects real demand versus one company's balance sheet talking to itself.

The CoreWeave precedent

CoreWeave offers the closest read on how this IPO may go. It posted an $863 million net loss in 2024, the last full year before its March 2025 IPO, as disclosed in its own S-1. That same filing showed two customers—Microsoft and a second buyer widely reported to be Nvidia—made up 77% of its revenue.

CoreWeave's debut was shaky. It priced below its range and closed flat on day one. The stock then went on a huge run, more than doubling within months.

Whether the market still has that appetite is an open question. Earlier this month, a warning from Anthropic's Dario Amodei about the pace of AI development—echoed by Sam Altman and Elon Musk—helped wipe close to 6% off the semiconductor index in a single session, alongside a spike in Treasury yields that made investors less patient with unprofitable growth stories.

Community and political pushback against data centers has also intensified globally, with some politicians proposing bans on the rapid build-out Nscale is relying on. And there is a limit to how many loss-making, billion-dollar companies the market will tolerate.

First in the queue

Nscale is getting ahead of companies like Anthropic and OpenAI in the IPO queue. Going first means Nscale helps test the waters for later listings by frontier AI companies. If the neocloud prices well, it sets a valuation benchmark and a tailwind for the much bigger listings expected from Anthropic later this year and OpenAI sometime in early 2027.

If Nscale stumbles, it is a much cheaper way for Wall Street to find out where the AI infrastructure story breaks than waiting for a trillion-dollar name to test it first.