At a glance
Anthropic is in talks to rent a second 460MW building at Nscale’s Monarch campus in West Virginia for about US$45 billion, Bloomberg and Reuters reported on 19 October 2026.
Nscale confirmed on 18 October 2026 that Microsoft had quit its Loughton site in Essex, where grid power is reported to be years away.
A second deal would take Anthropic to 920MW at one campus and about 60 per cent of Nscale’s contract book, with the first building due to supply it in late 2027.
Anthropic has signed one building at Kogan in Queensland, is in advanced talks on AirTrunk’s Kurri Kurri campus in the NSW Hunter, and is the reported customer behind DigiCo’s 71MW at SYD1 in Sydney.
Nscale has one contracted site in all of Asia Pacific, a 24MW rented hall in Indonesia, and runs the region from a Singapore head office it opened in 2025.
Nscale, the AI cloud company founded by Josh Payne, who grew up in Newcastle in New South Wales, is in talks to sell Anthropic a second block of computing power worth about US$45 billion, Bloomberg reported on 19 October 2026. The deal would cover a second 460MW building at Nscale’s Monarch campus in West Virginia, two months after Anthropic agreed a first US$45 billion deal for the first building. On 18 October 2026 Nscale confirmed Microsoft had pulled out of its Loughton data centre in Essex, where the Telegraph reported grid power might not arrive until the 2030s.
Nscale has lost the anchor tenant for an unbuilt 50MW site at Loughton and is in talks to sell 460MW more at Monarch, where its prospectus plans to generate up to 8GW on site. Anthropic’s Australian sites sit beside existing high-voltage infrastructure too: its first lease at Kogan in southern Queensland is beside a substation among gas-fired power stations, and the reported second campus, AirTrunk’s Kurri Kurri in the NSW Hunter, reuses a smelter site beside a 132kV line. Anthropic’s Australian tender asked for 1GW in use by the end of 2027, which is when Monarch’s first building is due to start supplying it.
A second building would add 460MW at Monarch
The second Monarch building would deliver 460MW of computing power on NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin chips, and Anthropic also holds a right of first refusal on the campus’s planned third building, Reuters reported on 19 October 2026. Discussions were ongoing and the details could change, according to the report.
The reported terms match the first deal: Anthropic agreed in August to pay about US$45 billion over six years for 460MW at Monarch, with the computing power due to start running its services in late 2027, Bloomberg reported on 26 August 2026. Nscale’s prospectus for its New York float, filed on 18 September 2026, records the August contracts as a series of GPU services agreements signed on 25 August 2026, with payments of up to about US$44.6 billion.
Two customers hold 85 per cent of a US$103.4bn contract book
Nscale had US$103.4 billion under contract at 31 August 2026, up from about half that a month earlier, and Microsoft and Anthropic made up about 85 per cent of it on the prospectus figures. A second US$45 billion would lift Anthropic’s agreements to about US$89.6 billion and the book to about US$148 billion, which would put one customer on roughly 60 per cent of everything Nscale has sold. Microsoft’s contracts, worth up to US$43.8 billion through December 2033 on the September filing, would fall to about 30 per cent.
Agreement | Value | Capacity and sites |
|---|---|---|
Anthropic, August 2026 | Up to US$44.6bn over six years | 460MW, Monarch building one, from late 2027 |
Anthropic, in talks | About US$45bn, reported | 460MW, Monarch building two, Vera Rubin chips |
Microsoft | Up to US$43.8bn through 2033 | Portugal and Norway named in the filing; Loughton withdrawn |
Bloomberg reported the August deal at about US$45bn; the filing records payments of up to about US$44.6bn for the same agreements. Source: Nscale Form S-1 (18 September 2026), Bloomberg (26 August and 19 October 2026), Reuters (19 October 2026).
The prospectus says Nscale expects “to fund the deployment required under the Anthropic Services Agreements through external financing and cash flows from operations”, and that its existing financing agreements may contain conditions to funding “that are not entirely within our control”. Nscale filed for its New York listing on 18 September 2026, and investors have pushed back on the roughly US$30 billion valuation it is seeking, some arguing for US$16 billion to US$19 billion, Bloomberg reported on 18 October 2026. In a note to staff, Payne said Nscale had “more than $100 billion in contracted revenue” and that demand “still remains insatiable”, Bloomberg reported on 21 October 2026.
Monarch is planned for up to 8GW generated on site
Nscale bought the Monarch site, about 2,250 acres in Mason County, West Virginia, in March 2026 by acquiring the site’s owner, American Intelligence & Power Corporation. The prospectus says the site can “deliver up to 8GW of gross behind-the-meter power”, meaning power generated on site rather than drawn from the grid, with expansion to that scale planned for 2031. Its first phase is 2GW of gross power, or 1.37GW of computing load, expected online by the first half of 2028, although Bloomberg has reported that Anthropic’s first building will start supplying it in late 2027. Two Anthropic buildings would take 920MW of that first phase, about two thirds of it.
Loughton was planned as a £2 billion AI data centre starting at 50MW and growing to 90MW, with Microsoft as anchor tenant and a 2027 opening. Nscale confirmed Microsoft’s withdrawal on 18 October 2026 and said it was looking at other power sources for the site. The prospectus warned in September that Nscale’s “ability to find appropriate sites for expansion will also be limited by access to power”.
Indonesia holds Nscale’s only Asia-Pacific site
Nscale opened an Asia-Pacific head office in Singapore in October 2025, and its prospectus lists one contracted site in the region, a 24MW rented hall in Indonesia. Its other sites are in the United States, Portugal, Norway, the United Kingdom and Iceland, so the US$148 billion it would have under contract after a second Anthropic deal rests almost entirely outside this region.
Of the 81MW of contracted capacity at Nscale’s five active sites at 31 August 2026, 56MW sat in data centres owned by other companies, where it rents the space and power and brings its own chips, which the filing says lets it supply compute “in the nearer term” while campuses take years to build. Australian data centre operators such as NEXTDC host that arrangement: AI compute provider Sharon AI runs its Melbourne cluster inside NEXTDC M3.
Australian AI infrastructure company Firmus runs its Melbourne chips in a hall operated by CDC, and Nscale’s one Asia-Pacific site, in Indonesia, is also a rented hall.
Zerra’s Kogan campus sits beside a high-voltage substation
Anthropic’s Australian sites sit beside existing high-voltage infrastructure. Its first Australian lease, reported by the Australian Financial Review on 16 September 2026, is for the first building at Singapore developer Zerra DC’s Western Downs Digital Park at Kogan, near Dalby in southern Queensland, with no capacity figure disclosed. Zerra’s application describes four 360MW buildings on 725.5 hectares and customer-owned switching stations at 275kV and 330kV, with the Braemar substation about 600 metres south of the site. The site sits among gas-fired power stations.
The AFR reported on 22 September 2026 that Anthropic was in advanced talks to anchor AirTrunk’s campus at Kurri Kurri in the NSW Hunter. The NSW Planning Portal now puts the campus at 550.5MW of total power consumption. It sits on a former aluminium smelter site beside an existing 132kV transmission line, where AirTrunk says it will fund a new substation itself.
The AFR also reported on 16 October 2026 that Anthropic is the customer behind a 15-year, 71MW contract at DigiCo SYD1 in Ultimo, a Sydney hall with power connected and run by ASX-listed DigiCo.
Anthropic’s tender for at least 1.4GW of Australian capacity, reported in July 2026, asked for at least 1GW in use by the end of 2027, a build it costed at up to US$15 billion. So far Anthropic has one signed Australian building, one campus in advanced talks and one reported contract, and all three sit beside existing high-voltage infrastructure. The tender’s US$15 billion is a construction cost and Anthropic’s US$89.6 billion at Monarch is six years of compute rental, so the two sums do not compare. Powered, connected halls are what the GPU cloud companies known as neocloud providers in Australia and the operators hosting them can offer.
What to watch
A signed second agreement. Reuters reported that the details could change, and neither company has confirmed the talks.
Nscale’s updated prospectus. An amended filing would show the second Anthropic contract, any change to Microsoft’s US$43.8 billion after Loughton, the financing Nscale has lined up for Monarch, and the price range for the float.
Nscale’s first Australian or New Zealand contract. Its only Asia-Pacific site under contract is the Indonesian hall, and its prospectus names access to power as the limit on where it can expand.
Anthropic’s remaining Australian leases. People briefed on Anthropic’s plans told the AFR in September 2026 it was working on at least four Australian leases, and Kogan plus, reportedly, SYD1 account for two of them.