Nvidia, one of the most significant chip designers globally, reportedly announced a $683 million investment in a UK-based AI infrastructure company that spun off from a cryptocurrency miner in 2024.
According to a Wednesday Bloomberg report, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the investment in Nscale, the AI arm of crypto mining company Arkon Energy, would be part of efforts to develop the UK’s infrastructure around artificial intelligence. Nscale spun off Arkon in May 2024 to offer AI cloud services across Europe.
The investment came amid a push by the UK government to develop the country’s AI infrastructure. Nvidia said it would partner with Nscale to scale up the UK’s capacity to 60,000 GPUs, which will be included in some of Nscale’s data centers by 2026.
“Sovereign AI infrastructure is key to national resilience, economic growth and strategic autonomy,” said Nscale CEO Josh Payne regarding the UK expansion. “This milestone deepens our commitment to providing critical AI infrastructure for the next industrial revolution.”
Prime Minister’s plans for AI in the UK
In January, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government planned to adopt a plan with 50 recommendations “to capture the opportunities of AI.” At the time, Nscale, Vantage Data Centres and Kyndryl committed about a combined $17 billion toward the investment.
Headquartered in California, Nvidia beat out all the major tech companies to reach $4 trillion in market capitalization in July. Some experts suggested the surge in stock price behind the milestone was driven by investor confidence in a push toward technologies dealing with AI.
The milestone marked Nvidia’s valuation just above the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies, which has hovered near $4 trillion since July.