Anthropic's compute shopping spree hits Nscale
Anthropic has agreed to spend $45 billion over six years renting AI compute from Nscale's West Virginia "Monarch" campus — about 460MW of an eventual 1.35GW site — with the first building running on Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chips, which aren't expected online until late 2027. Planning documents put the full campus and its on-site power plant at roughly $71B, of which $47B is chips alone. (The Next Web, Digitimes, IBTimes)
The tenancy itself has a backstory: Microsoft signed a letter of intent for the same West Virginia site in March and walked away over the summer, clearing the slot for Anthropic. Nscale still has a separate LOI to supply Microsoft with up to 1.35GW at the same campus on a similar Vera Rubin timeline — how the two arrangements coexist wasn't explained. It's the latest in a string of massive compute commitments Anthropic has made this year: a $50B arrangement with Fluidstack, $45B with SpaceX (worth about $1.25B/month across two SpaceX data centers), a $10B, six-year deal with Volta Infra Holdings for capacity from a Norway data center, and a $5B compute agreement with AMD in July. The Information reported in June that Anthropic was also floating more than a dozen preliminary US leases totaling over 1GW, with Google possibly backstopping lease payments. Anthropic is projecting 2028 revenue of $190–200B against a current $47B run rate, and has said "inevitable strain" on infrastructure is already hurting reliability at peak hours.
Nscale, two years old and London-based, has raised roughly $4.9B and sits at a $14.6B valuation after a $2B Series C; its board includes Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg. It carries a $51B contracted-revenue backlog against roughly $100mn actually booked in a recent quarter, and is targeting a US IPO as soon as next month — despite its flagship spending being in Appalachia and its most prominent hyperscaler relationship (the Norway campus) being for Microsoft rather than for the UK market it's marketed against.
The 38GW hole nobody's filled
Morgan Stanley estimates US data centers need roughly 68GW of new power capacity between 2026 and 2028, with only about 30GW covered by construction already underway or contracted grid capacity — leaving a 38GW shortfall with no clear solution. The problem is timing: grid interconnection queues run 5–7 years, hyperscalers want capacity in 2–3. Microsoft and Amazon alone are projected to spend close to $1 trillion combined in 2027; global data center construction spend is projected to approach $2.9 trillion through 2028, against hyperscaler lease commitments exceeding $1.2 trillion over the same stretch. (Crypto Briefing)
Morgan Stanley's report frames that gap as pushing operators toward behind-the-meter power — gas turbines, fuel cells, nuclear co-location — and names three direct beneficiaries: GE Vernova (gas turbine backlog now at 116GW, targeting 125GW by year-end, with data-center orders reportedly doubling), Eaton (an 85% jump in data-center orders in Q2), and Vertiv (FY guidance raised to $14B after 24% YoY growth). Kimmeridge, an energy investor with its own stakes in gas producers and the Commonwealth LNG terminal, put a number on the flip side the same week: managing partner Ben Dell estimated data centers could add 5–10 Bcf/d to gas demand growth, but warned nearly half of proposed US data centers face delay or cancellation from political backlash, permitting gridlock and construction bottlenecks — citing $170B in projects already delayed or cancelled since January 2024, 70% of Americans (per Gallup) opposing local data centers, and over 500 US jurisdictions with some form of restriction already in place. (Crypto Briefing)
Lancium's answer to the same power crunch is to sell itself as a power-first developer: the Texas company took an equity investment from Nvidia this week alongside a technology partnership, as it pushes a roughly 15GW site pipeline aimed at pairing secured grid capacity with Nvidia's compute stack. It's the latest instance of a chipmaker buying into the site-development layer rather than just selling into it. (Storagereview)
A week of moratoriums, on three continents
The opposition Kimmeridge is pricing in showed up everywhere this week, in remarkably similar form. In Nova Scotia, Cumberland municipality passed a first-reading bylaw for a six-month moratorium on data-centre development permits, triggered by 3Sha Infotech's purchase of 44 hectares of Upper Malagash farmland — following Oakville, Ontario's one-year moratorium earlier in August. Ottawa's council, meanwhile, voted to draft a formal policy framework rather than a ban, but empowered staff to flag any "hyperscale" (50MW+) application so councillors can pause it via interim bylaw while the framework is written. An Angus Reid poll cited in the Cumberland coverage found 68% of Canadians would oppose a large AI data centre near their home, and 68% want heavier AI regulation even at the cost of slower development. (CBC/Cumberland, CBC/Ottawa)
In Melbourne, Zerra DC's proposed A$1.1B, 336MW "Project Dune" on the former Ford Broadmeadows factory site — fast-tracked through state planning provisions rather than local government — drew a formal objection from Victoria's EPA over noise, plus a moratorium call from Hume City Council joined by three neighbouring councils. The project's promised 670 ongoing jobs contrasts with the 5,000+ Ford once employed on the same land. (ABC News AU) Zoom out to national politics and Australia's federal government is pushing the same fight to a higher level: Energy Minister Chris Bowen wants new data centres to bring their own renewable generation backed by gas firming, plus water-use rules, over the objection of Queensland and the Northern Territory — Bowen says Canberra is prepared to legislate over the states if needed. AEMO estimates data centres' share of national electricity consumption will grow from 3% today to 13% within a decade. (ABC News AU)
The AP's survey of the US midterm landscape found the same pattern crossing party lines: Democratic governors in New York and Pennsylvania have moved against fast-tracked data-centre permitting, Republican Texas halted new approvals pending grid-impact audits, and a Fox News poll found 60% of Republicans and 53% of MAGA voters oppose a data centre being built near them. In Nebraska, a 12-month moratorium in Cass County threatens to freeze Tenaska's 1,300-acre site exploration; in New Mexico, Oracle's $165B Project Jupiter has run into a state Supreme Court order halting a new well authorization amid drought litigation, despite Oracle's pledges of $50M for local water infrastructure and 21 million gallons/year in efficiency savings. (AP) And in London, a much smaller fight reached the same endpoint by a different route: Tower Hamlets' planning committee said it would have refused Truman Estates' 5,200 sq m data centre on the historic Brick Lane brewery site, but lost a non-determination appeal, and the Housing Minister approved the scheme in July anyway, citing the economic benefit of latency-sensitive capacity for the City's financial sector over local housing and heritage objections. (The Conversation)
Off the coast of Maine, the opposition took a stranger shape: Deepgreen Western Passage has filed for a preliminary FERC permit to study an underwater data centre in Passamaquoddy Bay — up to 50 tidal turbines and 34 submerged server pods. Eastport's city council voted against the project, and at a public hearing over 100 residents attended with no one speaking in favour, per the city manager. Peskotomuhkati tribal representative Aaron Dana said his community remains opposed and views the developer's outreach as merely checking a box on consultation. (CBC)
Regulators moving in opposite directions on disclosure
Two regulatory stories this week point at the same lever — what the public gets to know about a data centre before it's built — pulled in opposite directions. The EPA has proposed making air-pollution disclosure for data-centre permits voluntary rather than mandatory under the Clean Air Act, framing it as cutting red tape for state and local officials. Critics including former EPA officials Joe Goffman and Mike Koerber argue the proposal breaks a Clean Air Act transparency guarantee and would weaken communities' ability to contest permits in court or in public opinion, and warned it could let states waive public notice entirely as a "regulatory subsidy" to attract investment. Critics also allege that Big Tech already achieves minor-source status by splitting a project's generators or turbines into pieces that individually stay under review thresholds. (Natural News)
NPR's reporting on Louisiana showed the same dynamic playing out through contract law rather than federal rule: Applied Digital's $3.6B "Delta Forge 1" campus in Boyce was negotiated under NDAs signed by five state senators, the parish assessor, and the full economic-development board that approved it — part of at least 54 NDAs signed by Louisiana officials since 2024, echoing a University of Mary Washington finding that at least 25 of 31 surveyed Virginia projects used NDAs too. Applied Digital's CEO Wes Cummins told NPR the practice "feels sneaky" but said it's largely driven by securities law. Michigan, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Ohio have NDA-ban bills pending, and Pennsylvania's governor has already banned the practice for agencies he oversees — while, as a counterexample, Hut 8's $10B West Feliciana Parish project in the same state was negotiated with zero NDAs and every document posted publicly. (NPR)
Virginia's tax exemption comes under fire, Spain sets an hourly bar
Virginia's data-centre sales-tax exemption, in place since 2010 and running through 2035, is now facing a direct legislative challenge: state Senate leader Louise Lucas stalled the budget until lawmakers agreed to an additional $0.011/kWh tax on data-centre electricity, effective this summer, plus a subcommittee due to recommend further changes by December 15. The state says the exemption cost $1.9B in lost revenue last year; the subcommittee's own estimate puts the industry's contribution at about $1.7B in state and $3.6B in local tax revenue over five years — with Loudoun County, where data centres supply 40% of local tax revenue, firmly opposed to any rollback. Ohio's governor already halted a comparable exemption in May. (Daily Signal)
Spain, meanwhile, has drafted a rule that goes well beyond the EU's own non-binding guidance to Big Tech: new data centres above 1MW would need at least 80% renewable electricity in every single hour of operation, rather than the annual matching common elsewhere — enforced by loss of grid connection for non-compliance, with projects already in permitting given only six months to comply or lose their queue position with no compensation. The decree also requires matching renewable generation to be installed in the 18 months before a facility begins operating, via contracts or local build, and imposes EU-only data residency requirements that reach directly at the American hyperscalers who built much of Spain's recent capacity. Spain has been one of Europe's fastest-growing data centre markets on the back of cheap renewables and available land, and the decree lands against Denmark's outright pause on new data-centre grid connections. (The Next Web)
Supply chain: tariffs still undecided, smuggling enforcement reaches the freight layer
The fate of the exemption that currently shields US-bound data-centre chips from a 25% semiconductor tariff remains unresolved — a Commerce Department review due July 1 still hasn't appeared. CCIA modeling cited in the coverage estimates that removing the exemption would cost the US economy $90bn/year, put 243,000 jobs at risk, and could see 20% of planned 2026–2030 US data-centre capacity (~$450bn of capex) cancelled, delayed, or moved abroad. Separately, Politico reported the administration is weighing a broader new round of tariffs explicitly covering data-centre servers alongside laptops and gaming hardware, still early-stage and unconfirmed. (The Next Web, CNBC)
On enforcement, the US is investigating Singapore-based freight forwarder Apex Logistics — a unit of Kuehne+Nagel — over 47 shipments of Nvidia-powered Super Micro servers allegedly routed through Southeast Asia and Hong Kong into mainland China in violation of export controls; two former Apex employees who allegedly misclassified the shipments left the company shortly after Apex was notified of the BIS investigation. If pursued, it would be the first US enforcement action against a logistics company specifically, rather than a chipmaker or reseller, expanding accountability up the supply chain to the freight and documentation layer. Kuehne+Nagel shares fell as much as 4.2% intraday on the news, and the case follows Taiwan's indictment of nine people, including a Nvidia manager and Super Micro employees, over forged documents tied to 130 diverted B300 servers. (Crypto Briefing, Quartz)