The global race for artificial intelligence infrastructure is now attracting the most experienced figures in Silicon Valley and technology governance. AI infrastructure specialist Nscale has just announced the arrival of Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg to its board of directors, alongside Susan Decker.
This announcement comes concomitantly with a lifting of $2 billion in Series Cwhich brings the valuation of the company to $14.6 billionconfirming the rise of Nscale in the new AI economy.
Infrastructure, the new battlefield for AI
Founded in 2024, Nscale has positioned itself from the outset in a segment that has become central in the technological ecosystem, namely the infrastructure needed to train and deploy artificial intelligence models.
The company designs and operates:
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- of the specialized AI data centers,
- of the GPU clusters,
- high performance network infrastructures,
- as well as a AI workload orchestration and management software stack.
In a market marked by the explosion in demand for computing power, these infrastructures now constitute one of the main bottlenecks in the development of artificial intelligence. The most advanced models require tens of thousands of GPUs and energy infrastructures capable of supporting colossal computing loads. In this context, companies capable of building and operating these platforms on a large scale are becoming key players in the digital economy.
A revealing tour of the new computing economy
Nscale’s financing illustrates the convergence between technological, industrial and financial players around AI infrastructure.
The financing round was led by the Norwegian group Aker ASA and the 8090 Industries fund. It also brings together several major players in the technological and financial ecosystem, including NVIDIA, Dell Technologies, Citadel and Jane Street.
This diversity of investors reflects a profound transformation of the sector. AI is no longer just a software industry driven by startups and research laboratories, and is becoming a heavy infrastructure industryrequiring investments comparable to those of telecommunications, energy or transport networks.
Strengthened governance to support expansion
In this context, the arrival of Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg to the board of directors of Nscale is part of the logic of supporting the transformation of the company into a global player in AI infrastructure.
Sheryl Sandberg has long been one of Silicon Valley’s most influential executives. Formerly COO of Meta Platforms and previously head of advertising activities at Google, she played a central role in the structuring and international expansion of several leading digital platforms.
Nick Clegg, former British Deputy Prime Minister, served for several years as Meta’s president of global public affairs, where he managed relations with governments and regulators.
Their arrival alongside Susan Decker, former president of Yahoo, demonstrates the growing importance of governance, regulation and public policy issues in the development of digital infrastructures.
AI, a question of industrial power
For Josh Payne, founder and CEO of Nscale, the rise of artificial intelligence opens a new phase of industrial transformation.
According to him, AI should be integrated into most economic sectors in the coming years, from pharmaceutical research to industrial automation, including transport and robotics.
Such diffusion, however, implies a massive increase in computing infrastructure. The need for specialized data centers, energy and networks is expected to grow at an unprecedented rate, leading to what some observers are already describing as the largest wave of technology investments in recent history.
Towards a new generation of hyperscalers
In this environment, Nscale aims to position itself as a hyperscaler specializing in artificial intelligencecapable of providing the infrastructure necessary for training, fine-tuning and inference of large-scale models.
Historically dominated by large cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud, this market could see the emergence of a new generation of players specializing in computing dedicated to AI.
In less than two years of existence, the company has raised several billion dollars to finance the construction of its infrastructure and is now preparing the next stages of its development, which could include an IPO.
