Nvidia is reportedly negotiating to back billions in debt financing for Nscale's planned Anthropic data center in West Virginia, according to reports from The Information and Bloomberg. Anthropic has already committed to a $44.6 billion contract covering just the first building of the project, per Nscale's IPO filing. Essentially, the chipmaker would be co-signing a customer's loans—a telling sign of how aggressively the AI industry is working to keep its infrastructure buildout alive as investors grow increasingly nervous about the sums involved.

The proposed arrangement would assist Nscale in securing financing for electricity and construction costs at its West Virginia campus. Under a structure known as a residual value guarantee, Nvidia would intervene if Nscale defaulted on construction payments—temporarily taking over the facility and helping locate a buyer and new tenant, according to The Information. Nvidia's prior support for cloud providers has largely covered leases and chip purchases rather than construction.

The stakes are considerable for Nscale, which is pursuing a public listing at a valuation of up to $35 billion despite mounting doubts about its ability to deliver on ambitious data center projects. Anthropic's contract with Nscale covers the first 460-megawatt building at the West Virginia campus, which is expected to run on Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chips. The two companies are also discussing a second deal worth approximately $45 billion for another building.

Nscale has faced difficulty getting its projects off the ground. As of August, the company had roughly 25,000 advanced AI chips operational—a small fraction of the nearly 500,000 it intends to deploy. Its West Virginia campus has encountered problems of its own: runoff from the construction site has flooded nearby homes on more than one occasion. In September, after months of negotiations, the project received state certification. This month, Microsoft withdrew from a planned Nscale site in England after grid power for it was pushed into the 2030s.

Nvidia has been a significant financial backer of the sector, extending roughly $170 billion in investments and credit support to neoclouds and large customers, according to The Information. That includes $1 billion in convertible financing committed to Nscale in September. Neoclouds—which rent out AI computing power without a cash-rich core business behind them—have come under pressure from investors. Shares of CoreWeave, Nebius, and IREN had each dropped more than 30% in October as of last week, CNBC reported.

The proposed guarantee would deepen Nvidia's financial ties to Nscale while helping secure a major customer for its chips. Anthropic, one of the largest buyers of AI computing power, has distributed its infrastructure spending across multiple chipmakers. One investor told The Information that Anthropic's involvement likely explains Nvidia's interest in keeping Nscale's project on track. The discussions also come as Anthropic faces questions about how it will finance its own rapid expansion. The company filed to go public this week, but Blackstone has cautioned investors that Anthropic may receive a below-investment-grade credit rating after its IPO. A junk rating would increase Anthropic's borrowing costs and could push it to continue relying on stronger partners to back its debt.