Anthropic has agreed to rent roughly EUR 39 billion in AI compute from Nscale, a British AI infrastructure company, according to a source familiar with the arrangement. The agreement marks the latest move in the AI lab’s aggressive push to expand its computing power.
Nscale, founded in 2024, has already struck deals with companies including Microsoft. Under the new arrangement, it will supply Anthropic with compute powered by Nvidia’s Vera Rubin chips, the company’s newest and most advanced chip system. The Vera Rubin platform combines six different chips working together and is regarded as the cutting edge of current chip design.
What the Nscale Deal Includes
The compute capacity is expected to begin powering Anthropic’s services in late 2027, the source said. The agreement spans six years, with the computing power sourced from Nscale’s flagship data center in West Virginia.
Over the past eight months, Anthropic has rapidly scaled up its compute capacity as it works to keep pace with rivals, most notably OpenAI. The Nscale deal is only the newest in a string of infrastructure partnerships the company has signed this year.
A String of Compute Partnerships
Earlier this month, Anthropic signed a EUR 9 billion deal with AI cloud startup Volta, founded in January, securing a six-year supply of cloud computing power from a data center in Norway. In July, the company signed a EUR 4 billion compute-related agreement with AMD.
In May, Anthropic revealed a large computing deal with SpaceX, run by Elon Musk. That agreement draws capacity from two SpaceX data centers and reportedly provides Anthropic with EUR 1 billion worth of capacity each month. In April, the company significantly expanded its partnership with Amazon, gaining access to an additional 5 gigawatts of compute, while also broadening its relationships with Google and Broadcom to add more power capacity.
The Broader Compute Race
Anthropic is far from alone in its pursuit of AI horsepower. The race to secure as much compute capacity as possible continues across the industry, with other major players including Google, OpenAI, and Meta following similar strategies. Anthropic’s spending spree reflects how central raw computing power has become to competition among leading AI developers.
The Vera Rubin-powered capacity from Nscale’s West Virginia facility is slated to come online in late 2027.
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