UK AI infrastructure startup Nscale has acquired a 2,250-acre data center campus in West Virginia and signed a 1.35-gigawatt compute deal with Microsoft at the site.
Nscale, the UK artificial intelligence infrastructure startup backed by Nvidia, has acquired a major data center campus in West Virginia and simultaneously announced a compute agreement with Microsoft — moves that underscore how rapidly the company has expanded since coming out of stealth just over a year ago.
The acquisition involves American Intelligence and Power Corporation, which owns the Monarch Compute Campus, a 2,250-acre site in West Virginia that is expected to have two gigawatts of power capacity by the first half of 2028, expanding to eight gigawatts by 2031. According to The Information, which first reported the story, Amazon and Meta were also interested in acquiring the site. Nscale declined to comment on that report. The Information also reported that Nscale told investors the acquisition would triple its near-term revenue projections, though the company’s current revenue figures are not publicly known.
Under the Microsoft agreement, the technology giant will rent 1.35 gigawatts of server capacity at the Monarch site, powered by Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin chips, beginning in 2027.
“Nscale is a global company, and the United States is the world’s largest AI infrastructure market,” said Josh Payne, Nscale’s chief executive. “AI infrastructure needs to be built where demand is, and right now a significant share of that demand is in the United States. Monarch allows us to meet that demand.”
Also Read: The AI Attack You Haven’t Heard Of. But Should.
The West Virginia deal is not Nscale’s first with Microsoft in the United States. Last year, the company signed a contract valued at up to $14 billion to build AI data centers in Texas. Nscale has also announced plans to operate data centers in the United Kingdom and Norway and to provide infrastructure for OpenAI’s Stargate data center projects in both countries.
The Monarch acquisition was partially financed through Nscale’s recent $2 billion funding round. Developing the full campus is expected to require billions of dollars in additional financing.
