Nscale’s route to a New York listing just got narrower. Its biggest customer has walked away from the site meant to anchor the story.
Microsoft terminated an agreement to rent AI capacity at Nscale’s planned campus in Loughton, Essex, according to The Telegraph. Construction had slipped repeatedly, and UK grid officials told the company adequate power could not be delivered until the 2030s. The site was to hold 23,040 Nvidia GPUs by the first quarter of 2027, giving 50MW of capacity with room to reach 90MW.
Nscale says the relationship with Microsoft remains strong and long-term, that other contracts are unaffected, and that it is exploring alternative power sources and other UK sites. The Loughton project was one of four announced in September 2025 under a reported $24B contract, alongside sites in Texas, Portugal and Norway.
An IPO priced for a different company
The timing is awkward. Nscale confidentially filed with US regulators a month ago and has applied to list on the New York Stock Exchange as NSCL, reportedly seeking $3B at about a $35B valuation. That is well above its last private mark of roughly $15B.
Concentration is the problem. Microsoft and Anthropic account for about 85% of Nscale’s contract value according to its filing, so losing one site tied to the largest customer reads as a signal to public investors. The company is also working through construction problems at its Norwegian facility, reported to include cooling leaks, regulatory hurdles and a fire.
Cheap AI compute has been the easiest story to sell in this market. Nscale now has to sell a second one, about execution risk, to buyers who have watched several neoclouds promise capacity they could not power.
