Nscale and Anthropic in Talks for a Second $45 Billion Compute Deal
Nscale and Anthropic are in talks over another $45 billion deal for computing power, Bloomberg reported on October 19, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter. Under the possible deal, Nscale would sell computing power to Anthropic, the maker of Claude, for about $45 billion. TechCrunch
The talks are still underway and details could change, according to those sources. TechCrunch's October 19, 2026 article said the report came from Bloomberg, not from its own reporting. Yahoo Finance also credited Bloomberg News as the source for the talks. Yahoo Finance
A deal on those terms would match an agreement the companies announced in August 2026. On August 26, 2026, Bloomberg reported Anthropic had agreed to spend $45 billion to rent AI cloud computing power from Nscale's large data center project in West Virginia. Reuters reported the same day that Anthropic would spend $45 billion to rent AI cloud computing power from the West Virginia campus, citing a person familiar with the matter. Reuters
That August deal covered about 460 megawatts of capacity at the West Virginia site, according to CNBC reporting on August 26, 2026. Nscale, which is backed by Nvidia, would supply the capacity on a rental basis, not as a sale of the buildings or equipment. CNBC
As of October 2026, both companies were working toward IPOs, with Anthropic still expected to go public in 2026. Nscale was in talks to raise $3.5 billion in pre-IPO financing before its listing. Bloomberg reported in October 2026 that Nscale had met investor pushback over its proposed $30 billion valuation.
The broader context here is the difference between dollars and megawatts. A $45 billion headline gets attention, but for teams that run AI systems at scale, what matters is how many megawatts are under contract and when that power comes online. Power sets limits on build schedules, networking, and usable output. If completed on the same rental model, a second $45 billion deal would roughly double the planned spending commitment between the same buyer and seller.
In my view, readers should not read too much into the identical $45 billion number yet. Two back-to-back deals at the same round figure can mean the build is divided into standard-size chunks, or that the financing is set up to repeat. It can also mean $45 billion is an early negotiating starting point. Details could still change. The practical questions are delivery timing in phases, how much power each rack uses, guaranteed usage levels, and who carries the risk if building work or connection to the power grid runs late.
On IPO timing, contracted revenue matters. Investors considering a pre-IPO company usually discount physical AI infrastructure for execution risk, the chance that construction slips. A signed purchase commitment from an established AI lab lowers that risk on paper. A reported deal that is not yet signed does not.
Worth flagging for anyone tracking these announcements as supply signals, talks are not working capacity. Even signed capacity is not usable capacity until the power is on and the systems pass acceptance testing.
Taking the longer view, the direction is still toward more usable computing for developers and businesses. If Nscale turns talks into powered, working racks, and Anthropic turns those racks into cheaper and more dependable training and inference, the daily running of AI models, the winners are teams building products on top. That depends on actual delivery, not headline numbers.
