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- Nscale Acquires the Monarch Compute Campus — America’s First State-Certified AI Microgrid with a Potential of up to 8GW+ of Onsite Powered Microgrid
SAN JOSE, Calif., March 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Nscale has signed an agreement to acquire American Intelligence & Power Corporation ("AIPCorp"), sponsored by Fidelis New Energy and 8090 Industries, including the Monarch Compute Campus in West Virginia — with plans to build one of the world’s largest AI Factories.
The acquisition secures the Monarch Compute Campus, a site with up to 2,250 acres in Mason County, West Virginia, and the United States’ first state-certified AI microgrid with a power runway scalable to over 8 gigawatts. It also establishes Nscale Energy & Power, a new global division of Nscale headquartered in Houston, Texas. The site has access to long-term, low-cost, onsite powered microgrid to support multi-gigawatt expansion over the long-term, a key bottleneck in the buildout of in-demand, cutting-edge AI compute.
The West Virginia campus is the first state-certified utility grid purpose-built for AI workloads in the United States. Initial power capacity of 2 gigawatts is expected to be online by the first half of 2028 with an expansion to approximately 8 gigawatts planned for 2031.
"Nscale is a global company, and the US is the world’s largest AI infrastructure market. AI infrastructure needs to be built where demand is, and right now a significant share of that demand is in the United States," said Josh Payne, CEO of Nscale. "Monarch allows us to meet that demand. The acquisition builds on our existing US footprint and reflects the pace at which we are scaling to serve customers around the world."
Nscale Energy & Power
Nscale Energy & Power will be led by veteran energy executive Daniel Shapiro as Chief
Power Officer, alongside Bengt Jarlsjo as Deputy Chief Power Officer. The full AIPCorp and Fidelis New Energy organization — leadership and staff — joins Nscale as part of the acquisition. AIPCorp’s team brings nearly a decade of experience and continuity in AI infrastructure development and will support Nscale’s development of the Monarch Compute Campus and Nscale’s future global development and expansion operations.
"The vision for AIPCorp was always to build the vertically integrated power-and-compute model that this combination achieves instantly. This combination — plus Nscale’s disciplined balance sheet — delivers exactly what the high-growth AI market demands: a debottlenecked, integrated neocloud platform built to scale," said Daniel Shapiro, Chief Power Officer.
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC acted as financial advisor, and Latham & Watkins served as legal counsel, each to Nscale. Greenhill, a Mizuho affiliate, acted as exclusive financial advisor to AIPCorp, and Vinson & Elkins LLP served as legal counsel to Fidelis New Energy.
About Nscale
Nscale is building the global hyperscaler engineered for AI infrastructure. Through vertically integrated AI solutions and modular, first-principles datacenter design across Europe and North America, Nscale delivers the compute foundation for enterprise AI training, fine-tuning, and inference at scale.
Media Contact: press@nscale.com
