Nscale wants a $51bn US IPO. Most of that revenue hasn’t arrived yet

Nscale is an AI infrastructure company founded in 2024. It is preparing a US initial public offering as early as September, Bloomberg reported. The pitch leads with one number: around $51bn in total contracted revenue.

Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are advising, though the timing could slip.

That headline needs a footnote. Nscale booked more than $100m in revenue last quarter. That is up from about $37m the quarter before, and roughly $33m in all of 2025. The $51bn is contracted future revenue. As Tech Funding News noted, a multi-year compute deal counts in full the moment both sides sign. That can be years before a chip switches on.

What Nscale actually is

Nscale rents out AI computing power, and it is building fast to have more of it. The company is pushing towards 10 gigawatts of data-centre capacity, up from 831 megawatts today. Its sites include Norway and West Virginia. It has about 25,000 chips running and nearly 289,000 active or contracted, including 194,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs.

The rise has been steep and strange. Nscale grew out of Arkon Energy, a Melbourne crypto miner, and its founder, Josh Payne, once worked in coal mining. A key partnership reportedly began with a single cold LinkedIn message. In under two years it has raised billions in equity and debt. It just agreed to buy the software firm Anyscale for about $1.65bn.

The board now reads like a listing prospectus. It includes Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta chief operating officer, and Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister. Sandberg has said Nscale and its chief executive remind her of early Facebook. That is the story the company wants investors to buy.

The number the IPO settles

Nscale is not the only one chasing this money. CoreWeave is already public with vast contracts. Crusoe sits near a $30bn valuation, and Together AI raised at $8.3bn. Nscale’s case for a premium is vertical integration. It owns the power, the buildings, the chips, and now the software on top.

The counter-argument is just as simple. Behind the $51bn sits a great deal of debt, including a recent $900m credit facility. Add the capital intensity of pouring billions into chips and power. It is part of a wider borrowing spree funding the AI build-out. Whether investors see a premium cloud or a leveraged bet is what the IPO will settle.