Anthropic in talks with Nscale on $45 billion compute deal in West Virginia

Nscale, an AI infrastructure provider backed by Nvidia, is negotiating a deal worth about $45 billion to supply computing power to Anthropic, the developer of the Claude models, according to people familiar with the matter, as reported on October 19, 2026. The agreement would see Nscale build a second facility for Anthropic at its Monarch data center campus in West Virginia.

The planned building would run on Nvidia's Vera Rubin AI chips and deliver 460 megawatts of computing capacity, the people said. Anthropic also reportedly holds a right of first refusal to buy or lease a third facility envisioned for the same site. Regulatory filings for Nscale's planned initial public offering separately list infrastructure agreements with Anthropic worth roughly $44.6 billion.

The deal could be signed within days, though talks are ongoing, no final decision has been made and the terms may still change. Neither Anthropic nor Nscale commented.

Anthropic steps into Microsoft's place

According to Nscale's IPO documents, the Monarch campus is designed to scale beyond 8 gigawatts of total power capacity once complete. Part of the site was originally meant to be leased to Microsoft, which announced a letter of intent for the project in March 2026. Reports say Microsoft pulled out over the summer and handed its tenancy rights to Anthropic.

A contract of this size could bolster Nscale as it seeks a valuation of around $30 billion in its listing. Some investors had earlier pushed the company to lower that target. Anthropic already ranks among Nscale's largest customers.

A wider scramble for capacity

Anthropic, valued at $965 billion in May 2026, is expected to pursue what could be a record-setting IPO in the coming months. It has been lining up compute at a rapid pace, including a $50 billion contract with Fluidstack, a $10 billion deal with Volta Infrastructure Holdings and a $45 billion agreement with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

The spending spree comes as investors grow uneasy about the heavy borrowing used to fund AI data centers. That anxiety has reportedly weighed on confidence across the sector, from chipmaker shares to the debt instruments of cloud computing companies.