Nscale in Talks to Acquire 8GW West Virginia AI Data Center Site: Report
U.K.-based AI cloud provider Nscale is in talks to acquire a large data center development site in West Virginia that could support up to 8 gigawatts of capacity, according to a report by The Information.
The potential deal would see Nscale acquire American Intelligence & Power (AIP), the current owner of the site in Mason County, giving the company control over the land along with existing permits and power agreements tied to the project, The Information reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the discussions and fundraising documents.
The property—known as the Monarch Compute Campus—is designed to support as much as 8 GW of data center capacity, making it one of the largest proposed AI data center developments in the U.S. The first phase of the campus is expected to deliver roughly 2 GW of capacity by 2027.
The project is backed by Fidelis New Energy and 8090 Industries, which formed AIP earlier this year to develop the site. Caterpillar has agreed to supply fast-response natural-gas generator sets to support the first 2 GW phase of the campus.
Plans for the location date back to 2023, when Fidelis initially proposed building a roughly 1 GW data center campus powered by an adjacent hydrogen production facility, according to a report by Datacenter Dynamics. The development has since expanded significantly as demand for large-scale computing infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence has surged.
The value of a potential acquisition has not been disclosed. The land is currently undeveloped, meaning Nscale would still need to invest heavily in constructing data center facilities and installing computing infrastructure. The property has reportedly attracted interest from several other technology companies, including Amazon, Meta, and AI cloud firm Fluidstack.
The reported talks come as Nscale is rapidly scaling its AI infrastructure footprint. Earlier this week, the company disclosed it had raised more than $2 billion in a Series C funding round that valued the business at $14.6 billion. The financing drew backing from a roster of investors including Nvidia and trading firm Jane Street, alongside several other institutional investors.
The capital raise reflects growing investor appetite for “neocloud” providers—specialized cloud platforms focused on supplying high-performance compute for artificial intelligence workloads. Nscale was originally spun out of Bitcoin mining operator Arkon Energy as part of a broader shift by some digital infrastructure firms toward AI computing.
Nscale currently operates data centers in Loughton in the U.K., Glomfjord and Narvik in Norway, and in Texas in the United States.
The company is also exploring a potential public listing and has reportedly hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to help prepare for an initial public offering, according to The Information.
