Nvidia’s UK Partner Is a 16-Month-Old Crypto Mining Spinout

Nscale, a little known British data center company that spun out of a crypto miner last year, has found itself at the forefront of a massive artificial intelligence-fueled data center boom.

Nvidia Corp. is investing £500 million ($683 million) in Nscale, Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang told reporters in London on Wednesday, and said the UK-based company would be part of an AI infrastructure buildout valued at as much as £11 billion. OpenAI named it as a partner for Stargate UK, an offshoot of an even larger US effort to increase the capacity to run AI systems. Microsoft Corp. said this week it would rent $6.2 billion in computing power from Nscale in Norway.