UK data center startup Nscale bets big on US engineering hub Bellevue amid AI boom – GeekWire
Fresh from $2 billion in fundraising and a $900 million line of credit, London-based data center Nscale is planning a major expansion at a new engineering office in Bellevue, Wash.
Nscale, one of the fastest growing companies building AI computing infrastructure, recently entered into a lease for approximately 24,000 square feet of space at The Eight office tower in downtown Bellevue.
This office is expected to open in January 2027. It will be Nscale’s engineering base in the United States, said a company spokesperson. The company currently employs about 50 people in the Seattle area, and the new office will be able to accommodate about 250 people.
The company earlier this year hired Nidhi Chappell, a former corporate vice president at Microsoft who led Azure AI and high-performance computing infrastructure, including the mainframes that power ChatGPT. As Nscale’s new president of AI infrastructure, based in the Seattle area, Chappell will oversee the company’s global engineering and data center operations.
“I’ve had a front seat to some of the biggest moments in AI over the past few years, but one thing always stands out: the world remembers the success, but it’s the people who build the infrastructure behind the scenes that make it happen,” Chappell wrote in a LinkedIn post last week announcing the company’s first “onboarding” event in Seattle.
Nscale, which is preparing to open an office in New York, said it chose Bellevue because of the concentration of AI infrastructure talent in the Seattle region and its proximity to major customers.
Microsoft is one example. Earlier this year, the companies announced an expanded partnership to deploy Microsoft’s next-generation AI infrastructure across Europe, including large-scale installations of NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs in Norway, Portugal and elsewhere. Nscale said it will be among the first providers outside of Microsoft to use the Vera Rubin platform, which supports Microsoft’s growing AI cloud infrastructure.
The new office is the latest sign of Bellevue’s growing role in the AI economy. The Eastside has become a magnet for companies building AI applications and infrastructure, with xAI, OpenAI, Databricks, CoreWeave, Armada, Anduril and others establishing and expanding offices.
AI companies have been giving a boost to the regional office market in general. For example, Claude maker, Anthropic, recently announced the expansion of its Dexter Yard offices in Seattle.
Nscale was founded in 2024. Its $2 billion funding earlier this year valued the company at $14.6 billion, believed to be the largest Series C financing ever raised by a European tech company. The capital is being used to expand Nscale’s AI cloud platform, GPU infrastructure and data center across North America and Europe.
Its backers include Astra Capital Management, Citadel, Dell, Jane Street, Lenovo, Linden Advisors, Nokia, NVIDIA and Point72.
News of Nscale’s Bellevue office was first reported by the Puget Sound Business Journal.
