Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg join the board of Nscale, valued at $14.6 billion

The global race for artificial intelligence infrastructure is now attracting some of the most experienced figures from Silicon Valley and technology governance. AI infrastructure specialist Nscale has announced that Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg are joining its board of directors, alongside Susan Decker.

The announcement comes alongside a $2 billion Series C funding round, bringing the company’s valuation to $14.6 billion and confirming Nscale’s growing prominence in the emerging AI infrastructure economy.

Infrastructure, the new battleground of artificial intelligence

Founded in 2024, Nscale positioned itself from the outset in what has rapidly become a central segment of the technology ecosystem: the infrastructure required to train and deploy artificial intelligence models.

The company designs and operates:

• specialized AI data centers
• GPU clusters
• high-performance networking infrastructure
• and a software stack for orchestration and management of AI workloads.

In a market defined by exploding demand for computing power, these infrastructures have become one of the primary bottlenecks in the development of artificial intelligence. The most advanced models require tens of thousands of GPUs and energy infrastructures capable of sustaining enormous computational loads.

In this context, companies capable of building and operating such platforms at scale are emerging as critical actors in the digital economy.

A funding round reflecting the new compute economy

Nscale’s financing round illustrates the growing convergence between technology companies, industrial players, and financial institutions around AI infrastructure.

The round was led by Norwegian industrial group Aker ASA and 8090 Industries, with participation from several major actors in the technology and financial ecosystem, including NVIDIA, Dell Technologies, Citadel, and Jane Street.

This diversity of investors reflects a deeper structural shift in the sector. Artificial intelligence is no longer solely a software industry driven by startups and research labs. It is becoming a capital-intensive infrastructure industry, requiring investments comparable to those seen in telecommunications, energy, or transportation networks.

Strengthening governance to support global expansion

Against this backdrop, the appointment of Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg to Nscale’s board reflects the company’s ambition to evolve into a global AI infrastructure player.

Sheryl Sandberg has long been one of Silicon Valley’s most influential executives. As former Chief Operating Officer of Meta Platforms and previously head of Google’s advertising business, she played a central role in scaling and internationalizing some of the world’s largest digital platforms.

Nick Clegg, the former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, later served as President of Global Affairs at Meta, where he oversaw relationships with governments and regulators worldwide.

Their arrival alongside Susan Decker, former president of Yahoo, highlights the growing importance of governance, regulation, and public policy in the development of large-scale digital infrastructure.

Artificial intelligence as an industrial power question

For Josh Payne, founder and CEO of Nscale, the rise of artificial intelligence marks the beginning of a new phase of industrial transformation.

AI is expected to integrate into most sectors of the economy in the coming years—from pharmaceutical research and industrial automation to transportation and robotics.

Such diffusion, however, requires a massive scaling of computing infrastructure. Demand for specialized data centers, energy capacity, and network infrastructure is expected to grow at an unprecedented pace, leading some observers to describe the current moment as the largest wave of technology infrastructure investment in recent history.

Toward a new generation of hyperscalers

In this environment, Nscale aims to position itself as an AI-focused hyperscaler, capable of providing the infrastructure required for large-scale model training, fine-tuning, and inference.

Historically dominated by major cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, this market may see the emergence of a new generation of players specialized in AI-dedicated compute infrastructure.

In less than two years of existence, the company has raised several billions of dollars to finance the construction of its infrastructure and is already preparing the next stages of its development—potentially including a future initial public offering.