Nscale inks massive AI infrastructure deal with Microsoft

Nscale, an AI cloud provider founded in 2024, has secured a major deal to deploy approximately 200,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs across data centers in Europe and the U.S. This deployment will occur through Nscale’s own operations and a joint venture with investor Aker. Key locations include a Texas data center leased by Ionic Digital, which will receive 104,000 GPUs over 12 to 18 months, with plans to expand capacity to 1.2 gigawatts. Additional deployments include 12,600 GPUs at the Start Campus in Sines, Portugal (starting Q1 2026), 23,000 GPUs at Nscale’s Loughton, England campus (starting 2027), and 52,000 GPUs at Microsoft’s AI campus in Narvik, Norway. This deal builds on prior collaborations with Microsoft and Aker involving data centers in Norway and the UK. Josh Payne, Nscale’s founder and CEO, emphasized that this agreement positions Nscale as