founder Josh Payne in line for $350m payout

Josh Payne, the 32-year-old founder of British data centre start-up Nscale, is in line for performance-related share payments worth up to $350m (£260m) after the company floats in New York, according to its prospectus.

The document, released on Friday night, said the package was designed to ensure Payne’s “continued long-term alignment” with shareholders. Nscale is targeting a valuation of about $35bn (£26bn) as demand grows for the computing power that underpins artificial intelligence.

How the award is structured

The potential share-based payments account for about 2.5 per cent of Nscale’s share capital, according to the prospectus. They will vest in stages between 2028 and 2032 if the company hits various targets.

The company said 40 per cent of the shares will be linked to stock price targets and a further 40 per cent to the deployment of computing capacity. The remaining 20 per cent relates to “other operational targets”.

The prospectus said: “Our compensation committee and board of directors believe that Mr Payne’s continued leadership is critical to our ability to successfully execute our long-term strategy, capitalise on emerging market opportunities and create substantial shareholder value.”

Payne’s compensation in 2025, including share awards, was £17.2m. That was just below the £17.7m paid to Pascal Soriot at AstraZeneca, the highest in the FTSE 100.

Payne was born and raised in New South Wales, on Australia’s east coast. He worked in a coal mine and as a manual labourer before setting up a bitcoin-focused company, Arkon Mining, in 2019. Nscale was spun out of that business, since renamed Arkon Energy, in 2024.

Revenue, losses and contracts

The company has grown on the back of contracts with US technology groups and backing from industry figures. It was valued at about $14.6bn in a funding round in March led by Aker, the Norwegian industrial investment company, and 8090 Industries, a US investment firm.

Nvidia also took part in that round. The chipmaker has invested more than $2bn in Nscale, including $1bn in convertible notes, and Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, has described the company as a “national champion for the UK”. Nscale is a major customer of Nvidia and also has a $1.2bn contract to supply it with computing capacity.

The prospectus showed revenue of $140.6m in the six months to June, up from $10.4m a year earlier. Net losses widened over the same period from $368.9m to $1.02bn.

Nscale said it expects losses to continue because of the “substantial upfront capital expenditure” needed to expand its data centre capacity and buy the hardware required to deliver its contracts.

At the end of August, the company said it had 55 megawatts of active capacity: 7MW from its own data centres and 48MW rented from third parties. That capacity is tied to $2.6bn in contracted revenue. A further 1.3 gigawatts is in the pipeline, tied to $101bn of contracts that have not yet started. One megawatt can support about 600 to 1,000 homes.

Nscale has signed a six-year contract worth $45bn with Anthropic, under which the AI lab will lease capacity at Nscale’s site in West Virginia from next year. It has also signed long-term agreements with Microsoft running until 2033 and worth $44bn, building on an earlier arrangement to supply the Microsoft UK supercomputer project.

The company, which raised £750m last year for its UK data centre plans, claims to have “line of sight” to 10GW of capacity.

The prospectus also set out risks. It said: “Our limited operating history, including our limited history of selling our AI cloud infrastructure offering, the dynamic and rapidly evolving market in which we sell our platform, and the concentration of our revenue from a limited number of customers, as well as numerous other factors beyond our control, may make it difficult to evaluate our current business, future prospects and other trends.”

About the author

Jamie Young

Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk

Advertisement