Nscale Invests €695M in Portugal with Microsoft as Crypto-to-AI Neocloud Hits $14.6B Valuation in Two Years
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A crypto miner turned Europe’s most valuable AI startup in just two years. Now it's spending $812 million to prove the model scales.
May 5, 2026 - 12:53 pm
TL;DR
Nscale, a cryptocurrency mining operation turned €14.6 billion neoclassoud, is investing €695 million in Portugal to supply 66,000 Nvidia Rubin GPUs to Microsoft’s Start Campus site in Sines. The deal extends Europe’s fastest AI infrastructure buildout, funded by private capital based on GPU demand economics rather than sovereign compute programs.
Two years ago, Nscale was a cryptocurrency mining operation. On Tuesday, the company announced €695 million ($812 million) in new infrastructure investment in Portugal, an expansion of its partnership with Microsoft that will deliver more than 66,000 Nvidia Rubin GPUs to a site with 1.2 gigawatts of permitted capacity. Nscale is now valued at $14.6 billion after a $2 billion Series C in March, backed by Nvidia, Lenovo, Dell, Citadel, Jane Street, and Nokia. It operates data centers across the UK, Norway, Portugal, Iceland, and the United States, and its CEO has stated the company plans to go public in 2026.
The trajectory from crypto miner to Europe’s most valuable AI infrastructure company took twenty-four months. The question it raises is whether Europe’s answer to the compute crisis will come not from governments or hyperscalers but from a new class of company that barely existed three years ago.
The Deal
The Portugal investment is split between €230 million in shared infrastructure and €465 million for a second 200-megawatt building at the Start Campus data center site in Sines, a deep-water port town on Portugal’s Atlantic coast.
Start Campus is permitted for 1.2 gigawatts of total capacity, making it one of the largest data center developments in Southern Europe. Microsoft announced a multiyear deal in October 2025 to lease capacity at the site and has committed $10 billion to the build-out as it works to overcome computing capacity shortages that have constrained Azure’s AI growth.
Nscale’s role is to supply the GPU infrastructure that Microsoft will use to serve its cloud customers, a partnership model in which the neoclassoud provides the hardware layer and the hyperscaler provides the customer relationship.
The 66,000 Nvidia Rubin GPUs scheduled for delivery from late 2027 represent a substantial allocation of next-generation silicon. Rubin, Nvidia’s successor to the Blackwell architecture, entered production in 2026, and demand for the chips already exceeds supply. Nscale’s ability to secure a 66,000-unit commitment reflects both its relationship with Nvidia, which invested £500 million in the company during its Series C, and the scale of Microsoft’s demand for compute capacity in Europe.
Nscale’s partnership with BT and Nvidia in the UK is already delivering 14 megawatts of sovereign AI data center capacity, and the Portugal expansion extends the same model southward to a jurisdiction with cheaper energy and fewer grid constraints than Britain.
The Neocloud Model