Nscale, a British neocloud spun out of Australian cryptocurrency mining company Arkon Energy two years ago, is preparing to list on the NYSE at an expected valuation of $35 billion, according to the Financial Times, while seeking to raise $3 billion in the offering, per Bloomberg. The deal will test whether public investors will accept a stock whose revenue is tied primarily to two customers.

That concentration is the defining feature of Nscale‘s IPO filing. The company says it has accumulated over $103 billion in contracts, but about 85% of that comes from two supply agreements: a deal to provide Microsoft with $43.8 billion of compute through 2033, and a $44.6 billion agreement with Anthropic. The Anthropic contract is conditional: it depends on Nscale obtaining financing, and Anthropic can walk away or cancel if Nscale fails to hit milestones the filing explicitly categorizes as “stringent.” The headline backlog, in other words, is not fully committed demand.

The pattern is not unique to Nscale. A recent paper by credit hedge fund Sona Asset Management, featured in the Financial Times, found that many AI infrastructure providers depend heavily on a small number of customers. Nscale competitor CoreWeave generates 67% of its revenue from Microsoft, while data center builder Applied Digital derives 67% of its revenue from Oracle and 30% from CoreWeave. Sona noted that such interconnectedness is not necessarily a bad thing, but a single setback or strategic shift by a major player could easily affect the entire industry.

Nscale‘s financials illustrate the cost of building out AI compute. Revenue was $140.6 million for the six months ended June 30, up sharply from $10.4 million a year earlier, while net losses widened to $1.02 billion from $369 million. Earlier this month, Nvidia agreed to provide Nscale with $1 billion in convertible debt as part of a larger $3.1 billion financing deal. The company was valued at $14.6 billion when it raised a $2 billion Series C led by Aker ASA and 8090 Industries.

Nscale operates data centers in Norway, Portugal, Texas and West Virginia. Its board includes former Meta executives Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg, along with former OpenAI executive Fidji Simo. The competitive field is crowded: besides CoreWeave, Nscale faces Nebius, Lambda and Crusoe, which last week said it raised $3.9 billion at a $30.9 billion valuation. How much of the $103 billion backlog is actually locked in, and whether public investors accept the two-customer dependence, will be the key questions when the deal prices.