Anthropic weighs second $45 billion Nscale deal for 460MW West Virginia AI campus

Anthropic is closing in on a second blockbuster lease with the same landlord, a move that would deepen one of the largest customer relationships in the short history of AI cloud computing. People familiar with the negotiations said Nscale is seeking to sell the AI lab roughly $45 billion of computing capacity in a second 460 megawatt building at its Monarch campus in West Virginia, a facility that would run on Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips.

The talks, first reported by Bloomberg, were confirmed by Reuters on October 19, 2026, and by CNBC the following day. Neither company would discuss them publicly. Anthropic did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, declined to comment to CNBC, and representatives for both Anthropic and Nscale declined to comment to Bloomberg.

The deal would sit beside, not replace, the agreement Anthropic struck in August to spend $45 billion renting capacity at the same West Virginia campus. According to Nscale's IPO filing, Anthropic's existing agreements with the company are worth as much as $44.6 billion. A second building would roughly double the lab's exposure to a single developer and a single power site.

Nscale is a UK-based neocloud that builds or leases data centers and sells computing capacity to hyperscalers and AI labs. It has expanded at a pace that has few parallels: its total contracted value has climbed from $100 million to more than $103 billion in two and a half years, and it competes with Nebius, Crusoe and Lambda for the same customers. Monarch, its flagship American site, is scalable to more than 8 gigawatts of gross power when complete, according to the IPO filing.

Key Facts

Reuters reported on October 19 that Nscale is in talks to sell AI computing power to Anthropic in a new deal worth about $45 billion, citing a person familiar with the matter. That person said the second Monarch building would deliver 460 megawatts using Nvidia's advanced Vera Rubin chips, and that Anthropic also holds a right of first refusal on the campus's expected third building.

Bloomberg reported on October 19 that a deal could be finalized as soon as in the coming days, while cautioning that deliberations are ongoing, details could change and no final decisions have been made. The outlet also reported that Nscale is seeking a valuation of about $30 billion in its IPO, and that Anthropic, valued at $965 billion in May, is expected to pursue its own potentially record-breaking listing in the coming months.

CNBC reported on October 20 that it had confirmed the second 460 megawatt West Virginia deal could be worth around $45 billion. The same report noted that rivals CoreWeave and Nebius have seen their shares fall 28% and 27% respectively over the past month amid concerns about heavy borrowing across the sector, and that Microsoft had pulled out of a deal to anchor an Nscale data center just outside London after delays connecting to the UK power grid.

Livemint reported on October 20 that Nscale has yet to secure financing for its first Anthropic contract, and that its September prospectus disclosed no binding funding commitments for the site, with Anthropic able to withdraw if financing is not secured by a specified deadline. The same report said Nscale posted a net loss of $1 billion on revenue of $141 million in the first half of 2026, and raised $3.36 billion in a pre-IPO round last month from investors including Nvidia, Apollo and Third Point.

Anthropic has assembled a portfolio of infrastructure commitments that extends well beyond Nscale: a $50 billion pact with Fluidstack, $10 billion with Volta Infrastructure Holdings and $45 billion with Elon Musk's SpaceX, alongside agreements with Advanced Micro Devices, Google and Broadcom. The company said earlier this year that demand for its Claude models and products had caused 'inevitable strain' on its infrastructure.

Analysis

What this really means is that Anthropic has decided its binding constraint is electricity and silicon, not capital, and that it is willing to concentrate an extraordinary share of its spending on one counterparty in one state. Two contracts of roughly $45 billion each with the same developer, on the same campus, running the same unreleased Nvidia generation, is a bet that execution risk at Monarch is lower than the cost of waiting for capacity elsewhere.

For Nscale, the second contract functions as IPO marketing. The company filed publicly for a US listing in September and is targeting a valuation of roughly $30 billion, with other reports putting the figure near $35 billion. A signed second Anthropic deal would give prospective investors a backlog number that dwarfs the $141 million of revenue it recorded in the first half of 2026, even as it posted a $1 billion net loss over the same period. But the customer queue is only as good as the financing behind the building, and the reporting that the first Anthropic contract remains unfinanced is the detail that should temper any reading of the headline figure.

There is also a customer concentration problem that cuts the other way. Nscale's prospectus names Microsoft and Anthropic as its expected major customers, and Microsoft has already walked away from two commitments: the West Virginia site in the summer, after announcing a letter of intent in March, and the London-area project after power connection delays pushed its expected supply date into the 2030s. Nscale told CNBC it remained 'committed' to the London project and was 'exploring alternative power sources for the site.' The bigger picture here is that the neocloud model is being stress tested in public, and the sector's share prices already reflect it: CoreWeave down 28% and Nebius down 27% in a month is a repricing of credit risk, not of demand.

Finally, the customer is paying for capacity rather than buying the building. Under the proposed structure, Nscale owns and operates the facility and its chips, and Anthropic pays as capacity becomes available. That keeps the capital cost off Anthropic's own books, but it converts a construction schedule into an operating expense that scales with delivery. If Vera Rubin shipments slip, Anthropic pays later; if they arrive on time, Anthropic pays a great deal, very quickly.

Why It Matters

The campus is designed to scale to more than 8 gigawatts of gross power when complete, according to the IPO filing, which places a single private developer's site in the same category as a large utility's generating fleet. A second 460 megawatt lease would move that comparison from a planning document into a signed contract.

The larger significance is financial. Anthropic's agreements with Nscale already total as much as $44.6 billion, and the lab has committed $50 billion to Fluidstack, $45 billion to SpaceX and $10 billion to Volta. Those commitments are being signed before the financing for the underlying buildings is in place, which means the AI buildout is now a credit story as much as a technology story. The 28% and 27% declines at CoreWeave and Nebius show how quickly investors will reprice that risk once borrowing costs come into focus.

It also matters for the IPO window. Nscale's listing is one of the first pure tests of whether public markets will pay roughly $30 billion for a company with a $1 billion half-year loss, $141 million of revenue and a customer base that until recently leaned heavily on ByteDance, which accounted for 73% of its $33 million of revenue last year. A second Anthropic contract makes that pitch easier. A second contract that cannot be financed makes it harder.

Next Up

Bloomberg reported that an agreement could be finalized as soon as in the coming days, so the shape of the deal should become clearer shortly. Watch three things: whether Nscale discloses binding financing for the first Monarch building before or alongside the second, whether Anthropic's right of first refusal on the third building converts into a third contract, and whether the SEC clears the comments that have kept Nscale from beginning formal IPO marketing.

Anthropic, for its part, has signaled no intention of slowing down. The company is expected to conduct its own listing in the coming months, and every lease it signs sets a floor under the compute it must sell to justify that valuation. The Monarch negotiation is therefore less a single transaction than a preview of how the next year of AI infrastructure will be financed: fewer buyers, larger commitments and a great deal of unsecured power.