{"id":330260,"date":"2026-03-09T18:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T18:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/330260\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T18:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T18:22:09","slug":"british-ai-datacentre-firm-nscale-raises-2bn-as-sheryl-sandberg-and-nick-clegg-join-board-technology-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/330260\/","title":{"rendered":"British AI datacentre firm Nscale raises $2bn as Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg join board | Technology sector"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nscale, a UK company vital to the government\u2019s AI ambitions, has raised $2bn (\u00a31.5bn) in a funding round and appointed the former Meta executives Sheryl Sandberg<\/a> and Nick Clegg to its board of directors.<\/p>\n

It brings the valuation of the London-based startup, which is backed by the US tech company Nvidia, to $14.6bn, it said in a statement, and follows a $1.1bn funding round the company raised<\/a> last September.<\/p>\n

Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister, \u201cbrings deep expertise at the intersection of technology, policy, and global affairs\u201d, the company said, and is \u201cat the centre of the most consequential regulatory and governance conversations shaping the future of AI\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Meta, brings \u201cunmatched experience in scaling the world\u2019s most influential technology companies\u201d, it said.<\/p>\n

Nscale is set to contribute to Stargate UK, a huge infrastructure partnership<\/a> announced last year that will involve the participation of OpenAI and Nvidia.<\/p>\n

It is also set to build<\/a> a supercomputer in Loughton, part of a government drive to \u201cmainline AI\u201d into the economy of the UK. That supercomputer is set to come online later this year, according to the government and Nscale.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe success of UK-based Nscale shows how firms are seizing this opportunity to invest, expand and create jobs in this country,\u201d the technologysecretary, Liz Kendall, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have Europe\u2019s leading AI ecosystem, and this news further underlines the growing international confidence in the UK as the natural home of AI innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nscale was spun out of the Australian bitcoin mining company Arkon energy in 2024. Its website touts datacentres across the US and Europe, including the UK, Portugal, Norway and Iceland.<\/p>\n

However, most of these do not appear to be datacentres Nscale itself has built; its flagship project in Norway, Glomfjord, was originally developed<\/a> by the Norwegian company Hydrokraft.<\/p>\n

Nscale\u2019s UK investments are part of a global blitz of AI deal-making announced last year, as governments and mostly US tech firms appeared to commit massive sums of money to building out vast datacentre infrastructure and fundamentally remaking the global economy.<\/p>\n

The UK government last September said<\/a> that US tech companies would commit \u00a331bn to building the UK\u2019s AI infrastructure. In the US, OpenAI said<\/a> it would commit $500bn to building AI infrastructure as a part of the Stargate project, with the participation of Oracle and SoftBank.<\/p>\n

Nvidia announced a spate of AI deals, including sovereign agreements as well as a \u00a3500m investment<\/a> in Nscale and a $100bn investment in OpenAI, which was to go mostly towards the purchase of its own chips.<\/p>\n

Cracks are appearing in some of the promises. Nvidia\u2019s $100bn deal with OpenAI melted away<\/a> in early February. Oracle and OpenAI said last week that they were scrapping plans<\/a> to extend a datacentre in Abilene, Texas, that is a vital part of OpenAI\u2019s Stargate US project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nscale, a UK company vital to the government\u2019s AI ambitions, has raised $2bn (\u00a31.5bn) in a funding round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-330260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}