25,000 of 289,000 GPUs Running: Nscale's Contracts Wait on the Glomfjord Buildout
The British GPU cloud company Nscale is preparing to list on the New York Stock Exchange with a target valuation of around $35 billion. But its flagship data center in Glomfjord, just north of the Arctic Circle, is running six months behind schedule — and the gap between contracted billions and actual capacity has become an execution question for IPO investors.
What has happened
Bloomberg reported on October 15, 2026 that Nscale's facility in Glomfjord is six months behind schedule. According to people familiar with the project and public documents, construction has been set back by cooling system leaks, conflicts with local rules and permits, construction delays, and a fire. So far, only 6.4 of the planned 30 megawatts are in operation (Bloomberg).
The reporting lands in the middle of an ongoing listing process. Nscale filed listing documents with the NYSE in September under the ticker NSCL, with a target valuation of around $35 billion, according to coverage by Startup Fortune building on Bloomberg's reporting. The company is also said to be running a pre-IPO raise of up to $3.5 billion — figures that are reported claims, not confirmed facts from the company.
Bloomberg itself does not describe the listing as delayed or repriced — only that the plans have become "muddied," that is, complicated. Nothing in the source material confirms that the IPO has actually been moved.
The picture from Glomfjord
Bloomberg's reporters were on site. In early October, the three-story floating hotel Kalmar was towed into the village of Glomfjord, with sea eagles circling over the fjord. The hotel, previously used to house migrants, has around 220 bedrooms — all empty, while the village waits for hundreds of construction workers who are meant to speed up the data center buildout at the edge of the fjord.
The detail says something about how labor-intensive the remainder of the build is: the company is bringing in accommodation on its own account precisely to pick up the pace, six months behind plan and with less than a quarter of planned capacity online.
The numbers behind $35 billion
The economics behind the listing show a company in rapid but costly growth. According to figures cited by Startup Fortune:
- Revenue: $140.6 million for the half year to June 30, up from $10.4 million a year earlier. In the second quarter alone, revenue passed $100 million.
- Losses: The net loss jumped to $1.02 billion, from $369 million the year before.
- Advisers: Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are said to be working on the listing.
At the same time, the valuation rests largely on future contracts, not current operations. Microsoft and Anthropic are described as anchor customers in multi-year agreements worth nearly $88 billion, and the company is said to have around $51 billion in total contracted revenue. All of these figures come from reporting and coverage of the company's own disclosures — they are not verified against primary documents such as a prospectus or financial statements in the available material.
The GPUs: contracted versus running
The most telling contrast is the company's own GPU numbers. Nscale itself claims to have around 289,000 GPUs in operation and under contract — against roughly 25,000 actually running today. That means over 90 percent of the promised computing capacity still exists only on paper, as the company's own, unaudited disclosures.
This is the gap the Glomfjord delay makes concrete. The contracts with Microsoft and Anthropic are only worth something if the capacity is actually built out and delivered. When the flagship facility is six months behind because of cooling leaks, conflicts with local rules, and a fire, execution ability — not the contract portfolio — becomes the central question for investors pricing the company.
A discrepancy in the sources
One clarification about geography: Bloomberg's first-hand reporting describes the delayed flagship facility as located in Glomfjord, north of the Arctic Circle. The Startup Fortune coverage, on the other hand, places the same facility in Narvik and links it to the Norwegian energy company Aker. The sources contradict each other, and the discrepancy cannot be resolved from the available material. This article relies on Bloomberg's own on-the-ground observations, which are the most direct source; the Narvik/Aker claim should therefore not be taken as confirmed.
It is also unclear how Nscale is responding to the reporting; any company response on the delays themselves is not documented in the available source material.
What it means
The Glomfjord case is a case study in a broader challenge for the so-called neocloud sector: companies that rent out GPU capacity and are financed against enormous future contracts. The model only works if the buildout keeps pace with the contracts. Nscale's case shows how thin the margin is — $140.6 million in revenue over half a year and a $1.02 billion loss, against a $35 billion target valuation and $51 billion in contracted revenue, with under ten percent of the GPU fleet actually running.
That this will hit pricing is analysis, not a documented conclusion. But the sequence is clear: until 30 megawatts are actually finished in Glomfjord, and until the 289,000 GPUs become more than 25,000 in operation, Nscale's $35 billion is largely a promise of construction skill north of the Arctic Circle — with a floating hotel of 220 bedrooms as the most tangible evidence that the buildout is still trying to catch up with the calendar.