Analysis
London-based AI infrastructure company Nscale has appointed Fidji Simo to its board of directors as it prepares for an anticipated fall 2026 public offering, Bloomberg reported. The numbers behind the listing:
- Current private valuation -- $14.6 billion
- IPO target valuation -- $25 billion
- Pre-IPO financing sought -- up to $3.5 billion
That target would be roughly a 70% step-up from Nscale's last private mark to its public ask.
“She joins a Nscale board that already includes former Meta executives Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg, plus Susan Decker.”
Simo most recently served as CEO of AGI Deployment at OpenAI -- effectively the lab's second-highest-ranking executive -- before departing in July citing health reasons; she continues to advise OpenAI part-time. She joins a Nscale board that already includes former Meta executives Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg, plus Susan Decker.
Nscale, founded two years ago, designs, builds and operates data centers serving the AI industry -- the same GPU-cloud category as CoreWeave, Lambda and Crusoe, all of which have similarly used public and pre-IPO capital markets to fund their own capacity buildouts. Pulse previously covered Nscale's rapid scale-up through 2026 in several stories, from early capacity announcements to this pre-IPO board build-out. Unlike those earlier funding milestones, Nscale's public listing will give investors an actual trading comparable in CoreWeave's own 2025 debut, the first time a GPU-cloud peer's public performance can be used to benchmark Nscale's ask rather than relying purely on private marks.
A jump from $14.6 billion private to a $25 billion IPO target, roughly 70% higher, mirrors the aggressive re-ratings running through nearly every AI-infrastructure story in this issue, from Microsoft's own data-center expansion plans to Positron AI's chip valuation. Unlike those private marks, Nscale's number will actually be tested by public-market investors within months rather than by the next private round.
What to watch: whether the roughly $3.5 billion in pre-IPO financing closes before the fall listing, and whether Simo's board seat signals any deeper OpenAI-Nscale compute relationship beyond her personal advisory role.
