Nscale’s IPO will test Wall Street’s appetite for concentrated AI bets once again

When British neocloud Nscale goes public, it will test public investors’ appetite for a stock whose revenue is tied primarily to two customers.

Since it was spun out of Australian cryptocurrency mining company Arkon Energy two years ago, Nscale has amassed over $103 billion worth of contracts, according to its IPO filing. But there’s a catch: Most of that, about 85%, comes from a deal to supply Microsoft with $43.8 billion worth of compute through 2033, and another supply agreement worth $44.6 billion with Anthropic.

Moreover, Anthropic’s agreement is contingent on Nscale obtaining financing, and the AI lab retains the right to walk away from or cancel the deal if Nscale fails to hit milestones that the filing explicitly categorizes as “stringent.”

Nscale’s customer concentration is a reminder of just how interconnected the AI industry has become. A recent paper by credit hedge fund Sona Asset Management, featured in the Financial Times, found that many AI infrastructure providers heavily depend on a limited number of customers. Nscale’s competitor CoreWeave, for example, generates 67% of its revenue from Microsoft, and data center builder Applied Digital derives 67% of its revenue from Oracle, and 30% from CoreWeave.