345,000 households — that is the electricity equivalent of the 460 megawatts Anthropic just leased from Nscale at the Monarch campus in West Virginia. Behind the $45 billion six-year deal is a decision: Microsoft signed a letter of intent in March and walked away this summer. Anthropic stepped in.

The economic incentive is straightforward. Nscale needs a marquee tenant to support a U.S. IPO potentially as early as next month, having disclosed approximately $51 billion in cumulative contracted revenue. Anthropic needs compute capacity to train and serve models that compete with OpenAI and Google. The full campus costs roughly $71 billion with about $47 billion for AI chips, and spans 1.35 gigawatts. Capacity starts late next year, remaining buildings in 2028.

The stakeholders are clear: Nvidia sells Vera Rubin chips to Nscale, Nscale'"'"'s investors price an IPO on the back of Anthropic'"'"'s commitment, and Anthropic'"'"'s users pay for the models trained on this infrastructure. The human consequence is that a small town in West Virginia will host one of the largest data centers in North America. Decisions made in boardrooms reshape landscapes thousands of miles away. 🌍