Nscale's Exponential Growth Fueled by Anthropic and Microsoft AI Compute Race

London-based data center startup Nscale has become one of AI's fastest-growing infrastructure companies, with its explosive growth driven almost entirely by two hyperscalers desperately competing for computing capacity: Microsoft and Anthropic. The company, founded just two years ago in May 2024 by Joshua Payne, has filed for a New York Stock Exchange IPO as of September 18, 2026, just weeks after announcing a landmark $44.6 billion six-year computing deal with Anthropic—a contract that represented a dramatic shift after Microsoft walked away from a competing arrangement in summer 2026.