Nscale wants a $35 billion valuation. Nvidia is helping foot the bill

Nscale has gone from obscure neocloud to one of the stranger IPO stories of the year. The London-based company filed for a New York listing last week at a valuation of up to $35 billion, according to the Financial Times, even though its latest S-1 shows a business still burning cash at a brutal pace.

The company is only two years old. It was spun out of Australian crypto miner Arkon Energy in 2024 and is led by founder and CEO Josh Payne. Its board has some very recognizable names on it now, including Sheryl Sandberg, Nick Clegg and Susan Decker. That makes the cap table look serious. The numbers, less so.

Nscale said it lost $1.02 billion in the six months to June 30, 2026. At one point, management also flagged “substantial doubt” about whether the company could keep operating as a going concern. Yet the pitch to investors is that $103 billion in contracts, much of it still not firm, will eventually convert into revenue on schedule. That is quite a lot of faith to ask for in one go.

Then there is Nvidia. It is Nscale’s biggest supplier, one of its investors, and, depending on where the IPO lands, likely soon one of its largest shareholders. On Sept. 15, Nscale signed a subscription agreement for a $3.1 billion financing round, and Nvidia is taking $1 billion of that in convertible notes or non-voting shares. Earlier company filings showed Nvidia buying warrants for more than 157,945 Nscale shares for $60 million and agreeing to guarantee up to $860.3 million of lease obligations tied to a Texas facility. Jensen Huang has basically said the quiet part out loud: without Nvidia’s support, these neoclouds would not be where they are today.

That leaves a familiar question hanging over the IPO. CoreWeave came before it, took losses, leaned heavily on a small group of customers, stumbled out of the gate, and then rallied hard after listing. Nscale could follow the same script, but the market is less forgiving now. Semiconductor stocks just got hit after fresh warnings about AI speed and valuation fever, and the politics around data centers keep getting uglier. If Nscale prices well, it gives the whole AI infrastructure trade a cleaner benchmark. If it doesn’t, Wall Street gets a cheaper lesson before the even bigger names show up.