Wedoany.com Report, On March 17 local time, AI cloud infrastructure company Nscale announced that it has signed a letter of intent with Microsoft to provide 1.35 gigawatts of artificial intelligence computing power. As a core component of this large-scale partnership, Nscale's Monarch AI campus in West Virginia, USA, will be developed as the global flagship deployment project for NVIDIA's next-generation Vera Rubin GPU. According to the plan, this deployment will be delivered in phases starting in the second half of 2027.
On the same day, Nscale also announced the completion of its acquisition of the Monarch computing campus located in Mason County, West Virginia. The campus covers up to 2,250 acres and is the first state-certified AI microgrid project in the United States. This means the campus will have independent power supply and dispatch capabilities, enabling it to provide stable, sustainable energy support for large-scale AI computing clusters.
Judging by the content of the collaboration, the scale of the 1.35 GW computing power supply intention reached between Nscale and Microsoft is extremely substantial. Gigawatt-level computing power typically corresponds to the power consumption needs of ultra-large-scale AI clusters, with 1.35 GW equivalent to the output of a small nuclear power plant. Such a massive computing power deployment will provide Microsoft with long-term infrastructure assurance for AI training, inference, and cutting-edge model research and development.
The decision to designate the Monarch AI campus as the global flagship deployment site for NVIDIA's next-generation Vera Rubin GPU further highlights the campus's strategic importance. Vera Rubin is NVIDIA's next-generation GPU architecture following Blackwell, expected to achieve leaps in performance, energy efficiency, and interconnect capabilities. Through this acquisition and partnership, Nscale has secured the capability for large-scale deployment of next-generation AI chips in advance.
This collaboration also reflects the changing underlying logic of AI computing power competition. On one hand, the demand for ultra-large-scale computing power is driving closer partnerships between cloud service providers and infrastructure providers; on the other hand, power supply and energy self-sufficiency capabilities are becoming core considerations for AI cluster site selection. Nscale's focus on AI microgrids is a forward-looking response to this trend.
With the signing of the letter of intent, the collaboration between Nscale and Microsoft has entered a substantive implementation phase. Over the next few years, with the delivery of Vera Rubin chips and the gradual activation of the Monarch campus, this gigawatt-scale AI computing power project is expected to become a significant landmark in the AI infrastructure landscape of the United States and globally.
