Anthropic in talks for second $45B Nscale deal: 460MW of Vera Rubin chips in West Virginia

• Who: Anthropic and Nvidia-backed neocloud Nscale, in talks over a second AI cloud deal worth about $45 billion. Bloomberg first reported the talks; Reuters confirmed them on October 19, 2026.
• What: A second facility at Nscale's Monarch data center campus in West Virginia — 460MW of Nvidia Vera Rubin AI chip capacity — with Anthropic holding a right of first refusal on Monarch's expected third building. Talks are ongoing and details could change.
• History: Reuters dates an earlier $45 billion Anthropic–Nscale deal to August; Data Center Dynamics describes it as 460MW over six years, with the Vera Rubin chips expected online late next year.
• The campus: 2,250-acre site acquired March 2026; up to 8GW planned, first 2GW phase due in the first half of 2028, powered by Caterpillar G3500 natural-gas generator sets. Microsoft has signed for 1.35GW of Vera Rubin NVL72 capacity there.
• The jitters: Bloomberg says investors urged Anthropic to lower its IPO valuation target; CoreWeave's shares slumped last week on its $50 billion debt load, fueling a global AI stock selloff; Microsoft walked away from Nscale's UK Loughton project after grid delays.
• Scale: Nscale's contracted value rose from $100 million to more than $103 billion in two and a half years. Anthropic has committed to renting more than 10GW of servers, including a $200 billion agreement with Google and a $50 billion Fluidstack partnership.

The deal on the table

Anthropic is negotiating a second roughly $45 billion AI cloud deal with Nscale, Bloomberg first reported and Reuters confirmed Monday. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters the talks cover a second facility at Nscale's Monarch data center campus in West Virginia: 460 megawatts of computing capacity running Nvidia's Vera Rubin AI chips. Anthropic would also hold a right of first refusal on Monarch's expected third building. The source cautioned that discussions are ongoing and details could change; Anthropic did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

Why West Virginia

Monarch is the centerpiece of Nscale's buildout. Data Center Dynamics reports the neocloud acquired the 2,250-acre site in March 2026; the campus could eventually hold up to 8GW of capacity, with the first 2GW phase expected online in the first half of 2028 and powered by Caterpillar's fast-response natural-gas generator sets. Nscale has already signed Microsoft for 1.35GW of Vera Rubin NVL72 capacity at the site.

The two companies have history. Reuters dates an earlier $45 billion Anthropic–Nscale agreement to August; DCD describes it as 460MW over six years, with the Vera Rubin chips expected online late next year. Nscale's contracted value has ballooned from $100 million to more than $103 billion in two and a half years, per Reuters, and its prospectus names Microsoft and Anthropic as its expected major customers — putting it in a race with Nebius, Crusoe and Lambda for the neocloud crown.

The other side of the ledger

The timing is delicate. Bloomberg, which broke the story, also reported that a cohort of investors has urged Anthropic to lower its IPO valuation target after a string of AI market setbacks. Last week, rival neocloud CoreWeave's shares slumped on concern over its $50 billion debt load, fueling a global selloff in AI stocks — the debt-financed buildout is being repriced in real time.

And Nscale just lost a marquee customer elsewhere: Microsoft walked away from anchoring Nscale's flagship UK data center in Loughton after power-connection delays pushed the expected supply date into the 2030s. For Anthropic, the question investors keep asking is whether contracted gigawatts convert into revenue fast enough to justify the paper they're written on.

Anthropic's shopping spree

This would be far from Anthropic's only bet. DCD notes the lab has signed more than a dozen letters of intent for data center leases with US developers and has committed to renting more than 10GW of servers from cloud providers — including a $200 billion agreement with Google and a $50 billion partnership with Fluidstack, alongside deals with AWS (a large cluster of its Trainium hardware), CoreWeave and Akamai. Google is also said to be willing to financially guarantee some of Anthropic's lease payments, in an arrangement akin to its backing of Fluidstack.

None of that guarantees the second Nscale deal closes. But with IPO investors already pushing for a lower valuation, locking in another 460MW of next-generation compute would signal that Anthropic plans to keep spending like a company that intends to win the capacity race anyway.