Nscale has closed a $900m revolving credit facility, a standing pool of borrowing it will draw on to speed up its data-centre build-out across the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, the company said on Tuesday. The London firm, which raised $2bn in a Series C at a $14.6bn valuation in March, is now stacking debt almost as quickly as it has raised equity.
The facility was syndicated across a dozen banks, and that roster is arguably the real signal. J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, MUFG, RBC Capital Markets, Bank of America, Crédit Agricole CIB, Deutsche Bank, Mizuho, SMBC, TD Securities, and KeyBank all took part, the kind of syndicate usually assembled for an established borrower rather than a company founded two years ago.
A revolving credit facility functions much like a corporate overdraft, money a company can draw, repay, and draw again as needed. That flexibility is worth more to Nscale than a single lump sum, because the $790m it raised for its Narvik site in Norway showed how project-by-project its financing had been until now.
A revolver carries another advantage over a fresh equity round. It adds firepower without diluting existing shareholders, which matters for a company that has already sold sizeable stakes across three rounds inside 18 months.
