Bloomberg first reported that Anthropic and Nscale were discussing a second deal. CNBC, citing a person familiar with the talks, said the proposed computing-capacity agreement would cover a 460-megawatt data center in West Virginia and could be worth about $45 billion.
The contemplated center would be at a West Virginia site used for an earlier project between the companies, CNBC reported. Anthropic declined to comment, and CNBC said it had asked Nscale for comment.
Nscale signed four computing-capacity agreements with Anthropic on Aug. 25. A Sept. 18 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) put potential payments under those agreements at up to about $44.6 billion. The filing says Nscale’s expected collections depend on delivery and service availability. Under one agreement, Anthropic must accept a block of computing capacity before payment is due.
At the time of its September listing filing, Nscale said it had no binding commitments for financing it expected to need to fulfill the Anthropic contracts. Nscale develops or leases data center facilities and sells computing capacity to AI developers and large cloud companies, CNBC reported. The U.K.-based company filed to list on the New York Stock Exchange in September, the outlet said.
The financing backdrop includes concerns about borrowing by AI infrastructure providers. CNBC reported that shares of rivals CoreWeave and Nebius fell 28% and 27%, respectively, in the month before Oct. 20, amid worries about heavy debt.
Anthropic said earlier this year that increased use of its Claude products was straining its infrastructure. The company has since announced computing agreements with Advanced Micro Devices, SpaceX, Google and Broadcom. Neither company has announced a second agreement.
