Anthropic is reportedly in talks for a second $45 billion compute deal with Nscale

Bloomberg first reported it Monday afternoon, and Reuters confirmed it with a source. The deal would cover a second building at Nscale's Monarch campus in West Virginia: 460 megawatts on Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips, with Anthropic getting first refusal on a third building. It would come on top of an earlier $45 billion deal for the same campus, which Reuters dates to August. Talks are ongoing, details could change, and neither company has commented. It comes right after Microsoft walked away from Nscale's Essex data center, which was in this morning's digest.

What this means for you: nothing changes for Claude users today. More compute is what eventually allows looser limits and bigger models, but Anthropic hasn't promised that. Bloomberg also reports that some investors have urged Anthropic to lower its IPO valuation target, and that Nscale is getting pushback on its own proposed $30 billion valuation.