Investors in Nscale’s planned United States initial public offering are pressing the Nvidia backed data centre developer to accept a valuation of 16 billion to 19 billion dollars, well below the roughly 30 billion dollars the company has been seeking, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The resistance follows a series of setbacks for artificial intelligence infrastructure listings, including the collapse of Australian data centre company Firmus’s IPO plan amid weak demand and falling AI infrastructure stocks.
Nscale filed for a United States listing on September 18 and is still working through comments from the Securities and Exchange Commission before it can begin a roadshow, so the discussions remain fluid and no final valuation has been set. The company’s filing showed a net loss of about 1.02 billion dollars in the first half of 2026 despite revenue growth of more than twelvefold, and disclosed about 103.4 billion dollars of total contracted value, of which only around 2.5 percent was active and producing revenue by late August.
The gap between contracted and operating capacity is the core of the investor case. Microsoft, both an investor and Nscale’s largest customer, withdrew from the company’s Loughton data centre in Essex after grid operators said power would not reach the site until the 2030s, a setback this site reported on October 18, and Nscale’s Norwegian facility is running about six months behind schedule. Microsoft and Anthropic together account for most of the contract backlog, which concentrates the risk if either customer changes its plans.
The valuation fight comes a month after Nscale raised 3.36 billion dollars in a pre-IPO convertible note round led by Third Point, with Nvidia contributing 1 billion dollars and Apollo, Citadel, Hudson Bay Capital and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council also participating. The notes convert into equity at a discount to the IPO price with conversion capped at a 30 billion dollar valuation, so a listing priced at 16 billion to 19 billion dollars would crystallise the repricing for the company’s newest backers as well as for public buyers.