London-based AI cloud startup Nscale is reportedly looking to raise $2.7 billion to expand its AI infrastructure.

The company is seeking funds off the back of a pending partnership with ByteDance, Bloomberg reports, citing an offering document viewed by the publication.

The funding would be used to build out its data center footprint globally and to deploy Nvidia chips to be rented out by ByteDance and other companies.

The Bloomberg report suggests that a large portion of the financing – $1.8 billion – would be a private credit deal led by Goldman Sachs. The document referenced further states that Nscale is seeking another $900 million in preferred equity and convertible shares.

Nscale told Bloomberg in an emailed statement: “We recognize that the increasing demand for AI and keen interest in our rapidly evolving industry are generating a lot of attention for Nscale, but we do not comment on speculation.”

Nscale is marketing its debt deal based on a potential $2 billion contract the company is working on with ByteDance, having already commenced a smaller project with TikTok’s parent company.

The document said that Nscale would offer ByteDance access to 27,000 Nvidia GB200s as a result of the contract, which would be housed in the company’s Norway data centers.

A ByteDance spokesperson said that the two companies had been in discussions, but a $2 billion contract “significantly overstates the scale of any possible cooperation.”

The deal is complicated by escalating tensions between the US and China, with the US placing restrictions on the AI chips that can be purchased by Chinese companies. ByteDance, a Chinese company, is unable to import advanced AI chips into the country – with US President Donald Trump recently further expanding these restrictions to include the previously allowed Nvidia H20s.

To get around these limitations, some Chinese firms are renting access to the chips from non-Chinese cloud providers. The Information reported in December that ByteDance told suppliers it was planning to spend up to $7 billion to access Nvidia chips in 2025, citing unnamed sources.

Nscale was only officially launched in May 2024. Later that year, the company raised $155 million in a Series A funding round led by Sandron Capital Partners with participation from Kestrel, Bluesky Asset Management, and Florence Capital. This built upon the $30 million in seed funding raised in December 2023.

The company claimed, as of December 2024, that it had expanded its pipeline of greenfield data centers across Europe and North America from 300MW to 1.3GW, with 120MW planned for 2025 development.

In March 2025, the company revealed plans to add 30MW to its facility in the Glomfjord Industrial Park, bringing the total capacity to 60MW. The company said that the data center would be hosting the “latest generation” of GPUs – currently the GB200s.

The company is planning a new 50MW site in the UK due to go live later this year.