Nvidia in Talks to Guarantee Debt for Nscale’s $44.6B Anthropic Data Center

Nvidia is in talks to guarantee billions of dollars in debt financing for AI cloud provider Nscale’s planned Anthropic data center in West Virginia, The Information reported, with Bloomberg later confirming. Anthropic has signed a $44.6 billion contract for the campus’s first 460-megawatt building, which will use Nvidia’s Vera Rubin chips, and the two are discussing a second deal of roughly $45 billion.

Under the proposed residual value guarantee, Nvidia would step in if Nscale defaulted on construction payments, temporarily take over the site and help find a new buyer and tenant. Nvidia’s past support for cloud providers has mostly covered leases and chip purchases rather than construction. It has extended around $170 billion in investments and credit support to neoclouds and major customers, including $1 billion to Nscale in September.

The stakes are high for Nscale, which is seeking a public listing at up to $35 billion. It had about 25,000 advanced AI chips running in August against plans for nearly 500,000, its West Virginia site has caused flooding of nearby homes, and Microsoft recently withdrew from a planned site in England.

The talks come as neocloud shares slide and Anthropic faces questions over financing its expansion, with Blackstone reportedly warning it may receive a junk credit rating after its IPO.