Nvidia-Backed Nscale Pitches $103 Billion Contract Backlog Ahead of Possible September IPO

Nscale wants Wall Street to be impressed. The UK-based, Nvidia-backed cloud infrastructure company is telling prospective investors ahead of a possible IPO that it has roughly $103 billion in total contracted revenue, according to investor documents reviewed by The Information and reported by Reuters. That's double the $51 billion figure Nscale was citing before.

The jump came from one deal. Anthropic, the Claude AI maker, agreed to pay Nscale $45 billion to lease AI computing capacity, Reuters reported in late August. The agreement covers about 460 megawatts at Nscale's upcoming data center campus in West Virginia and runs six years, according to West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey's office, which acknowledged the reports on August 27 but said it had not independently confirmed the terms. Nscale plans to fill that capacity with roughly 194,000 of Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chips. The West Virginia facility isn't expected to come online until the end of 2027.

$103 billion is contracted revenue spread over the life of these deals, not money Nscale has booked or will book this year. Nscale's contracts average 5.7 years, which works out to about $18 billion a year if annualized, according to The Information's review of the documents. One person familiar with the discussions told Reuters the figures are "illustrative" and not formal revenue guidance.

Compare that to what Nscale is actually generating today. Its Q2 2026 revenue is estimated above $100 million, up from about $37 million in Q1, according to Bloomberg figures cited by Dealroom. That's real revenue, and it's a small fraction of the headline number getting all the attention.

For context, rival neocloud CoreWeave posted over $5 billion in revenue in 2025 and has guided for more than $12 billion in 2026, per Dealroom's reporting. Nscale isn't at that scale yet. It's selling investors on a promise of future capacity, backed by contracts from serious buyers, but a promise is still a promise until the data centers get built and the bills get paid.

Locking in a $45 billion, multi-year commitment from one of the fastest-growing AI labs on earth is significant. Anthropic posted $11.6 billion in Q2 2026 revenue, surpassing OpenAI for the first time in quarterly terms, according to Quartz. A company burning through cash at that pace committing billions of dollars years in advance is a legitimate signal that demand for AI compute isn't slowing down. Yahoo Finance framed it correctly: these long-term deals give Nscale proof that major clients will pay for capacity before it even exists.

Anthropic isn't putting all its chips on Nscale, either. It has also signed a $35 billion deal with Lambda for a Texas data center being built by Hut 8, a $50 billion agreement with Fluidstack, and a $45 billion deal with SpaceX, according to Reuters figures cited by Quartz. Anthropic itself filed confidentially for an IPO in June 2026 and investors expect it to go public around October at a valuation north of $2 trillion, per the Financial Times.

Nscale hasn't announced a formal IPO date. The reported September 2026 timetable remains a target communicated to investors, not a locked listing. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are reportedly advising, and Nvidia is participating in a pre-IPO capital raise of up to $3.5 billion, contributing roughly $2 billion directly and backing convertible notes led by Third Point. That's on top of a $2 billion Series C round Nscale closed in March 2026 at a $14.6 billion valuation, before the Anthropic deal was even signed.

Nvidia's money is everywhere in this deal, from the chips going into West Virginia to the capital funding Nscale's IPO run-up. That's not illegal or improper, but investors weighing Nscale's public offering should know Nvidia has a direct financial stake in Nscale looking as strong as possible on the way to market.

The execution risk is the part nobody's pitch deck emphasizes. Nscale still has to build the data centers, install the chips, and secure the power to actually deliver on $103 billion worth of promises. West Virginia's governor's office wouldn't even confirm the Anthropic contract's terms independently. Whether Nscale can turn a backlog into real, recognized revenue at anywhere near that scale remains the open question heading into any listing.