Anthropic has agreed to pay roughly $45 billion over six years to British AI infrastructure company Nscale for cloud computing capacity, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal covers about 460 megawatts of compute at a Nscale data center under development in West Virginia, expected to come online by the end of 2027.
The facility will run on Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chips, a system combining six chips that is set to start shipping late next year. Anthropic has cited "inevitable strain" on its infrastructure from surging demand for its Claude models and has struck a rapid string of compute deals in recent months, including agreements with AMD, SpaceX, Amazon, Google and Broadcom.
The agreement is also a boost for Nscale, a company founded in 2024 that is preparing for a possible IPO as soon as next month. Anthropic itself confidentially filed IPO paperwork with the SEC in June, underscoring how central massive compute commitments have become to the AI industry's growth race.