A second conversation about the same campus
Anthropic is in talks to rent about $45 billion of computing power from Nscale, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the negotiations. The capacity would come from a second building at Nscale's Monarch Compute Campus in West Virginia, which Bloomberg reports would deliver 460 megawatts running on Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips. The talks follow a signed baseline: on 25 August 2026, Nscale entered into four agreements with Anthropic for dedicated GPU infrastructure at the same campus, which its prospectus values at up to approximately $44.6 billion. Bloomberg also reports that Anthropic holds a right of first refusal on a third Monarch building — an opportunity to take that building under specified conditions, not a commitment to lease it.
The status of the story matters as much as its size. This is a negotiation, reported by one outlet and summarised by Reuters with an explicit caveat: Reuters could not independently verify it, neither company responded to requests for comment, discussions are ongoing and details could change. At least one trade outlet has already headlined the talks as a signing. They are not a signing. A negotiation reported as close can still close at a different size, on different terms, or not at all.
What the signed numbers actually say
Begin with what is signed, because Nscale's prospectus — filed publicly with the SEC on 18 September 2026 — separates it cleanly from what is being discussed. As of 31 August 2026, the filing reports $103.4 billion of active and contracted total contract value: the face value of signed long-term take-or-pay contracts across their full committed terms, excluding optional extensions, renewals and unexercised capacity. Only $2.6 billion of that total is what the filing calls active — capacity online and revenue-generating. Contract value of this kind is a schedule of payments that becomes due if Nscale delivers; it is not revenue recognised, and it is not cash available to build with.
Inside that total sit two customers. Microsoft's statements of work provide for payments of up to approximately $43.8 billion through December 2033, subject to delivery and service-availability requirements — supplier-level agreements the filing does not place at Monarch. Anthropic's four August agreements provide for up to approximately $44.6 billion at Monarch itself, on the same delivery conditions, and they carry an exit: if Nscale misses a tranche's delivery window beyond a specified period, Anthropic may terminate that tranche without liability. Add the reported second agreement at $45 billion and — if it is signed, and if it covers capacity beyond the four signed tranches — a single customer would stand behind roughly $90 billion of potential payments at one supplier. Both conditions are doing real work in that sentence. The prospectus predates the talks and says nothing about them, so whether the reported deal is additional to the signed $44.6 billion cannot be established from the filing. The $90 billion is arithmetic on reported numbers, not a figure either company has disclosed.
Set against the contracted total is the business as it currently exists. For the six months ended June 30, 2026, the prospectus reports revenue of $140.6 million and a net loss of $1,020.1 million. And on financing, the filing is specific: as of the prospectus date, Nscale had not obtained binding commitments for any of the financings required to fund performance under the Anthropic Services Agreements, and there is no assurance it will obtain them on acceptable terms or at all. That statement is scoped to the Anthropic agreements — the filing separately records about $2.35 billion of committed bank facilities supporting its existing footprint — but the Anthropic build is the largest single obligation in the book, and it is the one whose money is not yet committed. The second agreement is also being discussed before the first Monarch facility is reported to have begun delivering its contracted Vera Rubin capacity; systems under the August agreements are reported to begin coming online in late 2027.
Why this week, of all weeks
The timing sharpens the question rather than settling it. Last week, CoreWeave's shares fell hard on concerns about its roughly $50 billion debt load, and the selloff spread through AI stocks. On Sunday it emerged that Microsoft had terminated its anchor agreement at Nscale's own Loughton site in the UK; Microsoft gave no reason for the exit, and separate reporting linked it to grid power at the site reportedly not arriving in sufficient quantity until the 2030s. Bloomberg's report on the talks also notes that a group of investors has urged Anthropic to lower its IPO valuation target. All three items are market context. None of them establishes the terms, the financing prospects or the likelihood of the Monarch agreement.
The Loughton comparison also needs its limit stated. Monarch and Loughton are different sites with different infrastructure arrangements; Loughton's difficulties illustrate execution risk in this sector, but they do not establish that Monarch faces the same constraints — or that it is insulated from them. What the second $45 billion should be read as, for now, is a claim on financing that has not been committed, for capacity that has not begun delivering, at a moment when the market is repricing exactly that kind of claim. If the deal is signed, the signing is the news. Until then, the number measures ambition, shared by both sides of the table.
Sources
- [1] NSCALE Ltd (primary), Form S-1 registration statement, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 18 September 2026 — $103.4 billion of active and contracted total contract value at 31 August 2026 (only $2.6 billion active) and the filing's TCV definition; Microsoft statements of work up to approximately $43.8 billion through December 2033; four Anthropic Services Agreements signed 25 August 2026 providing for up to approximately $44.6 billion at the Monarch Compute Campus, four tranches of Vera Rubin NVL72, and the tranche termination right; revenue of $140.6 million and net loss of $1,020.1 million for the six months ended June 30, 2026; the financing statement scoped to the Anthropic agreements; about $2.35 billion of committed bank facilitiesRead source
- [2] Reuters, "Nscale, Anthropic in talks for $45 billion AI cloud computing deal, Bloomberg News reports", 19 October 2026 (published 19:39 UTC, updated 21:08 UTC), via Northland News Radio — talks not signing, ~$45B, second Monarch facility, 460 MW on Vera Rubin per Bloomberg, August deal at the same campus, right of first refusal on a third building, no comment from either company, Reuters could not independently verify, investor/IPO-valuation line, CoreWeave debt context, contracted value growthRead source
- [3] Crypto Briefing, "Anthropic in talks to buy $45 billion in computing power from Nscale", 19 October 2026 — second-building detail; the August agreement's reported six-year term and late-2027 online timing, cited to CNBCRead source
- [4] Data Center Dynamics, "Anthropic signs $45bn compute capacity agreement with Nscale — report", 19 October 2026 — cited as a framing caution only: its headline upgrades talks to a signing; no fact in this article rests on itRead source
- [5] ALFW, "Microsoft Exits Nscale's Loughton Site. Grid Power May Take Until the 2030s.", 18 October 2026 — our earlier coverage of the Loughton termination and the reporting linking it to grid-power delaysRead source