🏗️Nvidia Weighs Guaranteeing Billions in Debt for Nscale's West Virginia AI Campus

Nvidia may end up owning Nscale's data center

Nvidia is in talks to guarantee billions in debt financing for Nscale's West Virginia data center. That's a big step for a chipmaker, and it's not the usual play. Nvidia's past support for neoclouds mostly covered leases and chip purchases. This would cover construction and electricity costs, and if Nscale misses payments, Nvidia takes over the facility temporarily and finds a buyer and new tenant. If you rent GPU capacity from neoclouds, the financing behind your provider just got a lot more tangled with Nvidia's balance sheet. The numbers are big. Anthropic's contract covers the first 460-megawatt building on the campus, and the two companies are discussing a second deal worth roughly $45 billion. Nscale is seeking a public listing at a valuation of up to $35 billion, and it has about 25,000 advanced AI chips running as of August against a plan for nearly 500,000. The catch? Nscale has struggled to get projects off the ground. Runoff from the construction site has flooded nearby homes more than once, and Microsoft pulled out of an English site after grid power slipped into the 2030s. Watch whether the guarantee closes before the IPO window.