Nvidia reportedly weighs guaranteeing Nscale’s construction debt for Anthropic’s West Virginia campus

Nvidia is reportedly in talks to guarantee billions in debt for Nscale’s planned Anthropic data center campus in West Virginia, according to The Information, later corroborated by Bloomberg. Under a residual value guarantee, Nvidia would step in if Nscale defaulted on construction payments, temporarily take over the facility, and help find a buyer and tenant. That is new territory: Nvidia’s earlier support for cloud providers mostly covered leases and chips, not bricks and power. Nscale’s IPO filing shows Anthropic signed a $44.6 billion contract for just the first 460-megawatt building, expected to run Vera Rubin chips, and the companies are discussing a second roughly $45 billion deal (second deal). The project won state certification in September.

A healthy project with a creditworthy tenant and a contract that size shouldn’t need its chip vendor to co-sign the construction loan. That Nvidia is considering it suggests lenders want more comfort than Nscale alone provides, and that Nvidia wants the campus built badly. One investor told The Information that Anthropic’s involvement likely explains Nvidia’s interest: Anthropic is among the largest compute buyers and spreads spending across chipmakers. But the dependence chain is long: Nvidia backs Nscale, Nscale builds for Anthropic, and Anthropic, per Blackstone’s warning, may land a below-investment-grade rating after its IPO (junk rating forecast).

Nscale had about 25,000 advanced chips running in August against plans for nearly 500,000, and Microsoft just pulled out of a planned Nscale site in England after grid power was pushed into the 2030s. Nscale is seeking an IPO valuation of up to $35 billion. Construction runoff from the West Virginia site has flooded nearby homes more than once; those neighbors are who the financial engineering doesn’t account for. Useful AI needs compute, but a buildout depending on suppliers guaranteeing customers’ debts moves risk around rather than reducing it. More in our NVIDIA coverage, Anthropic coverage and finance coverage.