Anthropic already has Nscale deals worth $44.6 billion – and more may be on the way
The two companies have not confirmed the negotiations, which according to Bloomberg and Reuters could be finalized "within the coming days." The deal concerns a new building at the Monarch campus in West Virginia – just before Nscale heads toward an IPO at a valuation figure investors are already pushing down.
Bloomberg and Reuters both reported on October 19, 2026, that the AI cloud provider Nscale is in negotiations to sell computing power to Anthropic for roughly $45 billion. The information comes from unnamed sources: Bloomberg cites "people familiar with the talks," while Reuters cites one person familiar with the matter. Neither company has confirmed the figures – representatives of both Anthropic and Nscale declined to comment, according to Bloomberg.
According to the sources, the deal could be final "as soon as in the coming days." At the same time, they stress that the negotiations are ongoing, that details could change, and that no final decisions have been made. The reports are thus not a confirmed deal, but a nearly completed negotiating track that two established news agencies independently heard about on the same day.
What the deal likely covers
According to Bloomberg's sources, it concerns a second building at Nscale's Monarch data center campus in West Virginia, which is to deliver 460 megawatts of computing power driven by Nvidia's advanced Vera Rubin AI chips. Anthropic has, according to the sources, also secured a right of first refusal on Monarch's expected third building.
The campus has substantial capacity in reserve: Nscale's IPO filing shows, as Bloomberg puts it, that Monarch can be scaled to more than 8 gigawatts of gross power. A single 460 MW building is thus a fraction of the total potential.
Microsoft's throne wobbles
A central part of the story is who will no longer occupy the building. According to Briefs.co, which cites Microsoft's own announcement in March, Microsoft signed a letter of intent that month related to a planned data center on the Monarch site. Over the summer, however, Microsoft withdrew from the West Virginia location – and it is, according to Bloomberg News, this absence that has paved the way for Anthropic as the tenant.
The shift is not without risk for Nscale. The company's IPO filing shows, according to TipRanks citing the filing, that Microsoft and Anthropic together account for roughly 85 percent of Nscale's contracts. That means when one of the two named customer anchors pulls out, the concentration risk in the company's contract mix is immediate – and a deal with Anthropic replacing Microsoft as the anchor tenant thus becomes not just a commercial win, but a substantial improvement to the story Nscale will tell the equity market.
An IPO with valuation pressure
The timing is no accident. Nscale publicly filed for a US listing in September and is seeking a valuation of around $30 billion, according to Bloomberg. As of the reporting time, the company was still working to respond to comments from the SEC before the share offering could be marketed.
In its preparations, Nscale in September raised $3.36 billion in a funding round led by Dan Loeb's Third Point, with Nvidia, Apollo Global Management, Citadel, Hudson Bay Capital and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council among the investors, according to Bloomberg.
But investors' appetite is, according to several reports, not as strong as the company had hoped. TipRanks writes, citing Bloomberg, that some investors believe Nscale must lower its valuation target to between $16 and $19 billion to attract buyers. In that context, a mega-deal with Anthropic functions not just as a new revenue contract, but as a valuable contract narrative days before the listing is to be marketed.
Anthropic's compute web
Anthropic already has significant exposure to Nscale. According to the company's IPO filing, as referenced by Bloomberg, there are agreements with Nscale for infrastructure worth up to around $44.6 billion. That figure sits very close to the reported $45 billion for the new building, but it is unclear how the two sums relate to each other – whether the new deal is an expansion of existing commitments, a partially overlapping framework, or a separate facility. None of the sources clarifies this, and it is among the most open questions in the story.
Beyond Nscale, Anthropic has, according to Briefs.co, entered into major compute agreements with several other players: a deal worth $50 billion with Fluidstack, $10 billion with Volta Infrastructure Holdings, and $45 billion with Elon Musk's SpaceX. The company is, according to Briefs.co, expected to follow Nscale's example with its own listing in the coming months. In that perspective, the extensive data center commitments function as a big bet from an AI lab that needs guaranteed compute capacity to scale Claude – and that wants the contracts in place before the market prices the company.
What remains uncertain
Several things must be emphasized:
- Nothing is signed. All details about the $45 billion, the 460 MW, the Vera Rubin chips and the right of first refusal on the third building come from unnamed sources speaking about private negotiations. Both companies have declined to comment.
- The relationship between $45 billion and $44.6 billion is unresolved. The filing figure and the reported figure may refer to different parts of the same relationship, but no source explains the overlap, and AIMag treats them here as two distinct reported figures.
- The valuation pressure varies between sources. TipRanks cites investors who believe the target must come down to $16–19 billion; other reports describe only that a group of investors is urging a reduction from $30 billion. It is thus uncertain exactly how much the pressure will actually cost Nscale.
- Microsoft's exit is attributed to Bloomberg News through secondary sources; Microsoft itself is not directly quoted in the available material about the decision.
What is most certain is the chronology: the IPO filing was submitted in September, the reports of the Anthropic talks came on October 19, and the filing was still with the SEC with outstanding comments – while the valuation target, according to at least one group of investors, was too high. Whether or not the $45 billion figure holds, the lesson is that the market for AI computing power is now at least as much about who can sign quickly enough as about who actually has the power, the chips and the buildings to deliver what is promised.