Nscale IPO 2026: No Date Set Yet, a Reported $35B Target and the $103.4B Backlog Behind It

Nscale has not set an IPO date: as of October 30, 2026, it has a public S-1 on file for an NYSE listing under ticker NSCL but no amendment with a price range, while reportedly targeting a valuation of up to $35 billion and, per Bloomberg, hearing from investors that $16 billion to $19 billion is realistic.

Nscale said in its own release that it filed a Form S-1 with the SEC on September 18, 2026 and that "the number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined." The SEC EDGAR filing index for Nscale shows that S-1 as the latest registration filing when checked on October 30, 2026, with no amendment setting terms. TechCrunch reported on September 25, 2026 that the IPO was expected later this year and, citing Bloomberg, that Nscale aims to raise $3 billion in it. Then, on October 15, 2026, Bloomberg reported that the company's flagship Narvik, Norway data center is six months behind schedule, with 6.4 of a planned 30 megawatts running, as summarized by Startup Fortune. Days later, Microsoft ended its anchor-tenant agreement for Nscale's Loughton, Essex site, CryptoBriefing reported, and Bloomberg reported, as relayed by The Inference, that investors are pointing to a $16 billion to $19 billion valuation.

What Changed: Updated October 30, 2026

• Microsoft ended its Loughton, Essex agreement. CryptoBriefing reported that Microsoft ended its anchor-tenant agreement for the site on October 18, 2026, after UK Power Networks said adequate grid power would not arrive until the early to mid-2030s. The Inference described the site as a planned £2 billion supercomputer campus of more than 23,000 GPUs. CryptoBriefing reported that Nscale's other contracts in Norway, Portugal and the US are unaffected by the Loughton decision.
• Investors reportedly cite $16 billion to $19 billion. Bloomberg reported, as relayed by The Inference, that a group of investors has urged a listing in that range, against the roughly $30 billion The Inference says the company had been targeting. The Financial Times figure cited earlier in this post was up to $35 billion. This is investor feedback, not a priced offering: EDGAR's S-1 list for Nscale, checked October 30, 2026, shows the September 18 S-1 and no amendment with a price range.
• Convertible note terms. CryptoBriefing reported that the pre-IPO notes convert into equity at a discount to the IPO price, with conversion capped at a $30 billion valuation. Nscale's release says the notes convert automatically when the IPO completes.
• Not changed: the $103.4 billion backlog (dated August 31, 2026), the $140.6 million of first-half revenue and $1,020.1 million net loss from the S-1, and Nvidia's $1 billion tranche due in mid-November 2026.

Nscale IPO Date: When Is Nscale Going Public?

Nscale has not announced when it will go public. As of October 30, 2026, EDGAR's S-1 list for Nscale shows the September 18, 2026 S-1 and no amendment; that S-1 leaves the share count and price range blank, so no pricing date exists yet. The company has applied to list on the New York Stock Exchange as NSCL, with Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley as lead bookrunners.

The step to watch for is an amended S-1 (an S-1/A) that adds a price range and share count. That filing usually launches the roadshow that precedes pricing. Until it appears on EDGAR, a specific Nscale IPO date is a guess, not a fact. The timeline so far, from EDGAR, Nscale and press reports:

Sources: SEC EDGAR filing index (CIK 0002110365) and Form S-1; Nscale press releases of September 18 and 25, 2026; Nscale's October 2, 2026 release on PR Newswire; Bloomberg via Startup Fortune, CryptoBriefing and The Inference. As of October 30, 2026.

What Valuation Is Nscale Targeting?

Nscale is reportedly targeting a valuation of up to $35 billion, a figure from the Financial Times that Fortune cited on September 24, 2026. The S-1 itself states no valuation. The last private mark was set in March 2026, when DatacenterDynamics reported a $2 billion Series C at a $14.6 billion valuation. A $35 billion listing would be about 2.4 times that mark, by Value Add VC's arithmetic. Bloomberg reported, as relayed by The Inference, that investors are pointing to $16 billion to $19 billion, about 1.1 to 1.3 times the Series C mark by the same arithmetic.

The pre-IPO round adds a floor of committed capital before any shares are sold. Nscale announced on September 25, 2026 that it raised $3.36 billion in convertible loan notes led by Third Point: $2.36 billion at closing from investors including Apollo funds, Citadel and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, plus a $1 billion Nvidia commitment expected in mid-November 2026. The notes convert into ordinary shares (non-voting shares for Nvidia) automatically when the IPO completes. CryptoBriefing reported that conversion is at a discount to the IPO price and capped at a $30 billion valuation.

How Much Has Nscale Raised Before Its IPO?

Nscale, founded in London in 2024 as a spinout of Australian crypto miner Arkon Energy, has funded itself in steps that grew roughly tenfold in under two years. Per the S-1, it issued about $155.0 million of Series A convertible notes between November 2024 and January 2025, raised about $1.1 billion in a Series B on October 8, 2025, took in $433.0 million through pre-Series C SAFEs on September 29, 2025, and closed a $1.64 billion Series C on March 27, 2026, with a second close of $118.3 million in April 2026. The $3.36 billion pre-IPO convertible round followed in September 2026.

Nscale Form S-1 (SEC, Sept 18, 2026); Nscale press release, Sept 25, 2026

Data

Nscale Financing Rounds Before the IPO ($M)

Item	Value
Series A notes (Nov 2024-Jan 2025)	$155M
Pre-Series C SAFEs (Sept 2025)	$433M
Series B (Oct 2025)	$1.1B
Series C (Mar 2026)	$1.64B
Pre-IPO convertible notes (Sept 2026)	$3.36B

The pre-Series C SAFEs converted into Series C preferred shares on March 23, 2026, per the S-1, so the rounds are shown separately and not summed.

The $103.4 Billion Backlog Versus $140.6 Million of Revenue

The S-1 reports $103.4 billion of active and contracted total contract value as of August 31, 2026, up from $38.0 billion at the end of 2025. Two customers carry most of it: agreements with Anthropic for up to about $44.6 billion of services at the Monarch Compute Campus in Mason County, West Virginia, and statements of work with Microsoft worth up to about $43.8 billion through December 2033. Only about $2.6 billion of the backlog was active, meaning billing, at that date. The figure is dated before Microsoft's October 18 exit from the Loughton site, and EDGAR shows no amended S-1 restating it as of October 30, 2026.

Revenue was $140.6 million for the six months ended June 30, 2026, up 1,252% from $10.4 million a year earlier, against a net loss of $1,020.1 million. Full-year 2025 revenue was $33.0 million. The S-1 counts about 25,000 active GPUs and 461,000 active and contracted GPUs as of August 31, 2026, across five active and twelve contracted data center sites, and more than 1,000 full-time employees.

Nscale vs. CoreWeave: The Public Comparable

CoreWeave is the closest listed peer: it rents Nvidia GPU capacity under multi-year contracts, financed largely with debt. Its second-quarter 2026 results put revenue backlog at about $104 billion as of June 30, 2026, close to Nscale's figure, but CoreWeave booked $2.575 billion of revenue in that one quarter. Our CoreWeave stock breakdown covers its debt load, and our CoreWeave funding history covers how it got to IPO.

Sources: Nscale Form S-1 (SEC, Sept 18, 2026); Fortune and DatacenterDynamics on valuation; CoreWeave second-quarter 2026 results release (Business Wire via Yahoo Finance, Aug 11, 2026). The periods differ: Nscale reports a half-year, CoreWeave a quarter.

Nscale vs. CoreWeave: Backlog and Latest Revenue ($B)

Contracted backlog ($B)

CoreWeave

~$104B

Nscale

$103.4B

Revenue, latest period ($B)

CoreWeave (one quarter)

$2.575B

Nscale (six months)

$0.14B

Nscale Form S-1 (Sept 18, 2026); CoreWeave Q2 2026 results (Aug 11, 2026)

Data

Similar backlogs, very different revenue: CoreWeave billed about 18 times Nscale's half-year revenue in a single quarter (Value Add VC arithmetic).

Why Did Microsoft End Its Loughton Agreement?

CryptoBriefing reported that Microsoft ended its anchor-tenant agreement for Nscale's Loughton, Essex site on October 18, 2026, because UK Power Networks said adequate grid power would not arrive until the early to mid-2030s. The Inference described Loughton as a planned £2 billion supercomputer campus of more than 23,000 GPUs.

CryptoBriefing reported that Nscale's other contracts in Norway, Portugal and the US are unaffected by the Loughton decision. One read on this, by Value Add VC: Narvik is behind on construction and Loughton is gone on grid power, so the question investors keep asking is how much of the $103.4 billion backlog turns into delivered capacity. The S-1 backlog figure is dated August 31, 2026, before the decision.

Why Is the Narvik Data Center Behind Schedule?

Narvik is the 50/50 joint venture with Norwegian industrial group Aker behind Stargate Norway, per the S-1. OpenAI withdrew from Stargate Norway in April 2026 and Microsoft expanded its agreement to take that capacity, the filing says; DatacenterDynamics reported that Microsoft contracted 30,000 Nvidia GPUs there, on top of $6.2 billion of capacity it signed for in September 2025.

Bloomberg's October 15, 2026 report, as summarized by Startup Fortune, said the site has been hit by cooling system leaks, local permitting fights, construction delays and a fire, that workers are being housed on a floating hotel, and that 6.4 megawatts of a planned 30 are running. That is about 21% of the planned capacity, by Value Add VC's arithmetic. One read on this: investors pricing a backlog-driven IPO will ask how fast signed megawatts turn into billing ones, and Narvik is the first site where that question has a public answer.

What the headline misses

Customer concentration is high. The S-1 says the largest customer accounted for 73% of revenue in 2025 and 52% in the first half of 2026. Fortune reported on September 23, 2026, citing the Financial Times, that ByteDance was the customer behind that 73% share, using Nscale's Norway capacity to reach Nvidia chips. The S-1 does not name ByteDance as that customer.

Nvidia sits on several sides of the deal: chip supplier, $1 billion note holder and the hardware behind the contracts that make up the backlog. And the S-1 says management's reliance on uncommitted debt and equity financing "initially raised substantial doubt" about the company's ability to continue as a going concern, a point Fortune flagged on September 21, 2026. The pre-IPO notes ease the funding question but do not answer the build-out one.

What to Watch Next (as of October 30, 2026)

• An amended S-1 with a price range. This is what sets the IPO calendar. Check the EDGAR index above; until it appears, Nscale has no date.
• Nvidia's $1 billion tranche in mid-November 2026. Nscale said it expects this money then; its arrival or any change to it is a direct read on the pre-IPO round.
• Narvik's ramp from 6.4 MW toward 30 MW. Any update in an amended S-1 on the site's timeline, or on the Bloomberg-reported delays, matters for the valuation.
• The size of the deal and the valuation. The reported targets are a $3 billion raise and up to $35 billion, while Bloomberg says investors cite $16 billion to $19 billion; the price range will show which holds.
• How an amended S-1 treats the Loughton exit. Any restatement of the Microsoft contracts or the backlog after Microsoft ended the Essex agreement would show up there.
• The AI infrastructure IPO window. Fellow neocloud Firmus withdrew its IPO in October 2026, while DayOne Data Centers filed for a Nasdaq listing.

Leadership is also filling in ahead of a listing: Nscale named former Meta executive Justin Osofsky chief operating officer in an October 2, 2026 release, reporting to founder and CEO Josh Payne. Follow every Nscale story on the Nscale Pulse hub.

The Bottom Line

Nscale is on file to go public but has no IPO date: no price range was on EDGAR as of October 30, 2026. The case for the reported $35 billion valuation rests on $103.4 billion of contracts; the case against it is $140.6 million of half-year revenue, a $1.02 billion loss, a flagship site Bloomberg says is six months late and, per Bloomberg, investors pointing to $16 billion to $19 billion. The amended S-1 will show which side the bankers priced for.