Nvidia-backed Nscale, Anthropic in talks for new $45 billion AI cloud deal, source says

Oct 19 (Reuters) - Nscale is in talks to sell computing power for artificial intelligence (AI) to Anthropic, the company that makes Claude. The new deal could be worth about $45 billion, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.

The data center developer is seeking another major deal with the AI company to build a second facility at its Monarch data center campus in West Virginia, the person said.

In August, Anthropic agreed to spend $45 billion to rent computing power for AI from Nscale's data center campus in West Virginia. According to the source, a second building at Monarch would provide 460 megawatts of computing power using Nvidia's advanced Vera Rubin AI chips.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

Anthropic also has the first chance to agree to a deal for Monarch's planned third building before it is offered to others, the person said. Talks are still taking place, and details of the plan could change.

Bloomberg, which first reported the news, also said that a group of investors had urged Anthropic to lower its target value for a possible initial public offering (IPO). This followed several setbacks in the AI market.

Investors are looking more closely at companies that are increasingly borrowing money to expand their AI infrastructure. Last week, shares in Nscale rival CoreWeave fell sharply because of concerns about its $50 billion in debt. This helped trigger a worldwide selloff in AI stocks.

The possible deal comes after Microsoft withdrew from an agreement to be the main customer for a major Nscale data center. Delays in connecting the site to the power supply pushed the expected start of power delivery into the 2030s.

Nscale has grown quickly since it launched. In two and a half years, the total value of its contracts grew from $100 million to more than $103 billion. It competes with Nebius, Crusoe and Lambda.

According to Nscale's prospectus, Microsoft and Anthropic are expected to be its biggest customers in the future.

(Reporting by Jeff Horwitz in San Francisco and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)