UK-based GPU cloud provider NexGen Cloud has raised $45 million in a Series A funding round.
The investment has come primarily from high-net-worth individuals and family trusts and will be used to expand NexGen Cloud's AI infrastructure in Europe.
Details about the investors have not been shared.
"We are thrilled to have the backing of our esteemed investors who share our vision for a robust and sovereign AI infrastructure in Europe," said Chris Starkey, CEO and co-founder of NexGen Cloud. "This Series A funding is a pivotal step towards realizing our goal of becoming the backbone for AI-powered solutions across the continent."
According to NexGen, the company's Hyperstack platform now has more than 10,000 users, including the likes of Red Hat, Ingenix.AI, Tyne, and ArchiLabs.
NexGen said that its future strategy will focus on "developing partnerships that enhance the access to and delivery of AI compute services." The company further plans to launch infrastructure services and AI products, including Fine-Tuning-as-a-Service, to help increase the efficiency of pre-trained AI models.
NexGen was founded in 2020 but launched its flagship platform Hyperstack in September 2023. The company had a revenue for 2024 and 2023 totaling £72 million ($91.7m).
In October 2023, the company announced plans to invest $1bn in an "AI Supercloud" which would be available via Hyperstack and feature 20,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. NexGen said at the time that it already had $576 million in hardware orders secured for the project, and deployment was planned for completion by June 2024.
Speaking to DCD, NexGen's co-founder and chief strategy officer, Youlian Tzanev, noted that the company has not "fully deployed" that amount of capacity as of yet. When asked for more information, Tzanev said the company had deployed "many thousands" but declined to share an exact number.
Tzanev added that the company hasn't been deploying that capacity all in one go, but that the company is "gearing towards it" and it will be supported by their Series A, Series B, and debt funding deals. In total, Tzanev said the company has raised $65 million in equity, along with unspecified debt raises.
The Supercloud was announced to be hosted in AQ Compute's Oslo data center in Norway in early 2024, though NexGen confirmed to DCD via email that it was no longer working with the colocation provider. Tzanev told DCD that the cloud provider is "continuing to expand [its] data center partnerships," adding that the company has data center capacity currently live and operational in Canada and Norway, and a "strong pipeline for expansion" in France, Germany and other sites in Scandanvia.
