AI data center developer Nscale has raised $1.1 billion to help its build-out in the UK and beyond.

The company secured the cash in a Series B round led by Aker ASA, and participation from the likes of Blue Owl, Dell, Fidelity Management & Research Company, G Squared, Nokia, Nvidia, Point72, and T.Capital.

Existing shareholders such as Sandton Capital have also pledged more cash.

London-based Nscale has hit the headlines in recent months thanks to digital infrastructure deals with the likes of OpenAI and Microsoft. It had previously been reported that it was looking to raise $2.7 billion.

“AI is reshaping industries, economies, and national strategies – but it cannot happen without the physical backbone: the data centers, the GPUs, and the software to orchestrate them,” said Josh Payne, CEO of Nscale.

“We are building a vertically integrated, AI-engineered foundation designed to power the next generation of technological change, enabling industries and innovators across the globe to achieve what today feels impossible.”

He added: “We are creating one of the largest global platforms of its kind – purpose-built to meet surging demand and unlock breakthroughs at unprecedented scale. This allows Nscale to provide our customers access to scarce, and highly sought after, compute capacity and rapidly accelerate the build-out of secure, compliant and energy-efficient AI infrastructure.

“Europe needs a Hyperscaler, and Nscale is rising to the challenge.”

Nscale was only founded in 2024, when Payne and his co-founders pivoted away from providing cryptomining infrastructure and moved into AI, acquiring a data center in Glomfjord, Norway, from their previous venture, Akkon Energy. At present, the site, which is powered by hydroelectric energy and uses natural cooling, remains the firm’s only data center.

However, it has ambitious plans for a string of facilities in the UK and elsewhere. In January 2025, it announced it planned to invest £2.5 billion ($3bn) in the UK, building its first data center on land it has purchased in Loughton, Essex. This is due to open next year. It has subsequently been revealed that the data center will be home to a Microsoft supercomputer powered by Nvidia GPUs, which the cloud giant said will be the largest such machine in Britain.

Meanwhile, Nscale is also working with OpenAI to power its Stargate UK data centers, and will apparently provide the ChatGPT-maker with access to 8,000 Nvidia GPUs.

The companies are already working together on Stargate Norway, with OpenAI renting space – and an eventual 100,000 GPUs – at a data center in Kvandal, outside Narvik, northern Norway, which is being developed by Aker. Microsoft is also set to become a customer of Nscale and Aker in Norway, having agreed a $6.2 billion, five-year contract to buy compute power in the Nordic nation.

Beyond its existing contracts, Nscale said the new funding “will be used to further Nscale’s deployment of large-scale AI infrastructure across Europe, North America, and the Middle East.” It appears to be following a similar path to CoreWeave, the US-based Bitcoin-mining firm turned AI infrastructure provider that has become a key part of the AI hardware ecosystem, and has raised more than $25 billion in debt and equity funding since the beginning of 2024.

“Demand for the build-out of secure, scalable AI infrastructure in Europe and across the world continues to accelerate,” said Justin Hotard, president and CEO of Nokia, one of Nscale’s new investors.

“Nokia is participating in Nscale’s investment round and announcing a partnership with Nscale to combine our expertise in IP and optical networking with their leading infrastructure platform, enabling the innovation needed for the future of AI infrastructure.