Nvidia weighs cosigning Nscale's West Virginia AI data center debt

Nvidia is in discussions to provide a residual value guarantee for billions in debt financing behind Nscale's planned Anthropic data center in West Virginia, The Information reported Thursday, with Bloomberg corroborating. In effect, the chipmaker would co-sign a customer's loan — a stark illustration of how difficult it has become to fund AI infrastructure at scale now that investors are wary of the capital intensity involved.

• Anthropic signed a $44.6B contract for just the first building (per Nscale's IPO filing).
• If Nscale defaults, Nvidia would temporarily take over the facility and help find a buyer/tenant.
• Nvidia's prior support covered leases and chip purchases, not construction.
• Nscale targets a $35B IPO valuation despite doubts about project execution.

Technical specs and scale The first 460-megawatt building is slated to run on Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chips. The parties are also negotiating a second deal worth roughly $45B for an additional building. As of August, Nscale had only ~25,000 advanced AI chips deployed versus a planned 500,000 — a massive gap between ambition and reality. The West Virginia campus has already caused headaches: construction runoff flooded nearby homes more than once. State certification came only in September after months of negotiation.

Neocloud pressure and Microsoft's exit This month Microsoft walked away from a planned Nscale site in England after grid power was pushed into the 2030s. Neocloud stocks — CoreWeave, Nebius, IREN — each fell over 30% in October, per CNBC. Investors are repricing risk: neoclouds lack a cash-rich core business, and AI infrastructure capex has exceeded forecasts. Nvidia has extended roughly $170B in investments and credit support to neoclouds and large customers, including $1B in convertible financing to Nscale in September.

Anthropic's role and its own credit risk Anthropic, one of the largest buyers of AI compute, spreads its infrastructure spend across multiple chipmakers. One investor told The Information that Anthropic's involvement likely explains Nvidia's determination to keep Nscale's project alive. But Anthropic faces its own financing questions: it filed for an IPO this week, and Blackstone warned it may receive a below-investment-grade rating. A junk rating would raise borrowing costs and push Anthropic to rely even more on stronger partners to back its debt.

Implications for CIS and Uzbekistan markets This episode underscores that modern AI infrastructure is inseparable from chipmaker financial engineering. Companies in the CIS and Uzbekistan building or planning their own AI data centers should proactively explore guarantee arrangements with anchor hardware suppliers (Nvidia, AMD, hyperscalers) and model scenarios for power interconnection delays, construction overruns, and operator default. Anthropic's IPO outcome and credit rating over the next 12–18 months will be a bellwether for AI compute pricing globally.