Josh Payne dropped out of high school in industrial Australia, spent three years underground, and turned an improbable career into Nscale: the AI infrastructure company everyone's watching. Now valued at $14.6 billion, it counts Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia among its clients.©DRA restless mind underground In an Australian mining town
Josh Payne spent his days hundreds of metres below ground. No diploma, no plan, but those long shifts left hours of silence he filled with entrepreneurship books. Something clicked. He taught himself to build websites, first selling protein supplements online, then launching a recruitment platform that matched construction workers with jobs across the country. These small businesses opened a door he had not expected: large infrastructure projects and the energy markets that powered them. That curiosity never stopped pulling him forward. He founded Arkon Energy to mine Bitcoin using cheap hydroelectric power in Norway and the United States. By late 2023, Arkon operated 330 megawatts of capacity and had raised $110 million. Payne had never studied engineering, but along the way he had learned something few competitors possessed: how to find the cheapest electricity on the planet, secure GPU hardware, and build data centres fast. When the AI boom arrived, the timing was his.One LinkedIn message
In early 2024, Payne moved to London and founded Nscale. Technology companies were desperate for partners who could deliver compute at scale, yet almost nobody could build quickly enough. He sent a cold message on LinkedIn to Øyvind Eriksen, CEO of Aker, the Norwegian industrial conglomerate controlling billions in energy assets. The pitch was simple: build massive computing hubs in the Nordics, powered by some of the cheapest renewable energy in the world. Eriksen replied, flew to meet him, and joined the board. The partnership moved fast. Within months, Payne acquired Kontena, a specialist in modular high-density data centres, and opened the Glomfjord site inside the Arctic Circle: 30 megawatts of AI compute running on 100 percent renewable energy. Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia signed on. Then came Stargate UK and Stargate Norway, two sovereign AI infrastructure projects backed by governments eager to reduce dependence on American hyperscalers. A company that existed only on paper twelve months earlier now sat at the centre of Europe's AI race."We are experiencing insatiable demand."Five million homes' worth of power
Capital followed momentum. A $155 million raise in late 2024. A $1.1 billion Series B in September 2025, the largest in European history at the time. Then, on 9 March 2026, a $2 billion Series C valuing Nscale at $14.6 billion. Sheryl Sandberg, Nick Clegg, and Susan Decker joined the board. The company now plans infrastructure totalling 5.5 gigawatts, roughly the consumption of five million American homes. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, handed Payne a bottle of Johnnie Walker whiskey after closing their deal. When he learned where the man building Europe's AI backbone had started, Huang could only laugh.© Duke26
