Josh Payne

Josh Payne founded Nscale, which was incorporated in London in May 2024, to build and run the computing capacity behind AI: data centers, GPU clusters, the power that feeds them and the cloud software used to rent them out. He is its chief executive and chair. Before Nscale he founded Arkon Energy, which builds and operates data centers that power the Bitcoin network, where he remains a director.

Capital on a large scale

In March 2026 Nscale raised a $2bn (£1.5bn) Series C led by Aker ASA and 8090 Industries, with NVIDIA, Dell, Nokia, Lenovo, Citadel and Jane Street among the backers. The round valued the company at $14.6bn (£10.9bn). Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker and Nick Clegg joined its board at the same time. At the launch Payne said: “Nscale is leading this buildout. We are building this foundation that the market sits on, the engine of superintelligence.”

On 25 September it announced a further $3.36bn (£2.5bn) in convertible loan notes led by Third Point, including a $1bn commitment from NVIDIA. The notes convert into shares when the company lists.

The route to a listing

On 18 September Nscale filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering, and applied to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NSCL. Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley are the lead bookrunners. The number of shares and the price range had not been set at the time of filing.

The filing gives the first public view of its finances. Revenue was $140.6m (£105m) in the six months to June 2026, against $10.4m a year earlier. In his letter to prospective shareholders, Payne said Nscale had grown from $100m of total contracted value to more than $103bn in two and a half years, and its team from 40 people to more than 1,000. The filing also describes a 200MW campus in Portugal that will support an expanded collaboration with Microsoft, and a July 2026 agreement to acquire Anyscale, which would add about 200 staff.

Why it matters to UK buyers

Nscale is a British-domiciled supplier of AI compute at a scale usually associated with US hyperscalers. The filing says its British domicile makes it a natural partner for sovereign AI work in Europe, and it lists a UK infrastructure program, first announced as Stargate UK in September 2025, to build capacity across several UK sites. For UK enterprises and public bodies that want AI workloads run in-country, that widens the choice of supplier.

In little more than two years Payne has taken Nscale from incorporation to a US listing application, raising billions of dollars along the way. If the listing goes ahead, public investors will get a direct stake in the build-out he has so far financed privately.