Nscale lands $900m bank credit line for global AI data-centre build-out
A two-year-old London startup has secured a massive debt facility from a dozen major banks, signalling that traditional financiers are now bankrolling Europe's AI infrastructure boom.
Nscale has closed a $900m revolving credit facility, drawing on a syndicate of a dozen major global banks to accelerate its construction of AI data centres across Europe, the US, and Asia-Pacific.
The roster of lenders is striking for a company founded in 2024 by Australian entrepreneur Josh Payne. J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and Crédit Agricole CIB were among the twelve institutions underwriting the facility. This level of mainstream banking support is typically reserved for established industrial borrowers, indicating that traditional finance is now explicitly funding the physical layer of the AI boom.
Opting for a revolver rather than another equity round is a deliberate strategy to avoid diluting existing shareholders. Nscale raised $2bn in a March Series C at a $14.6bn valuation, following a $1.1bn Series B, meaning it has already sold sizeable stakes across 18 months. The new facility functions as a corporate overdraft, allowing the London-based firm to draw, repay, and draw again as needed.
That flexibility marks a shift from Nscale’s previous approach. Until now, its financing has been largely project-by-project, such as the $790m raised specifically for its Narvik site in Norway. A revolver allows the company to manage cash flow across a sprawling global footprint rather than tying funding to single locations.
The capital is urgently needed to fulfil massive commercial commitments. Nscale has committed €695m to a site in Portugal supplying Nvidia chips to Microsoft, and signed a 1.35GW letter of intent for a Microsoft campus in West Virginia. Committing to power contracts and Nvidia hardware comes long before the revenue from renting out that capacity arrives, and a revolver is designed to bridge exactly that timing gap.
“The closing of this revolving credit facility with key global investment banks reflects real institutional confidence in our platform, capital structure, and team,” said Payne. He added that the facility increased the company’s flexibility to build “at speed and at scale” for the technology firms that train and deploy the largest AI models.
Originally a crypto-mining operation, Nscale pivoted to become a vertically integrated AI cloud provider bundling software, compute, and power. It now sits atop $3.1bn in equity raised across three rounds, alongside a $1.4bn delayed-draw term loan backed by its GPUs. However, Nscale did not disclose the facility’s pricing, maturity date, or whether the debt is secured against its property or chips, leaving the true cost of the deal an open question.
