AI cloud computing startup Fluidstack is reportedly in talks to raise around $700 million in a new funding round that would value the company at around $7 billion.
According to reports from The information And Bloomberg As of Friday, Situational Awareness – the investment firm founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner – is in talks to lead the funding. As previously reported, hedge fund AI increased its stake in Bitcoin miner Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) to 9.4% in October.
The forward-looking valuation highlights growing investor appetite for companies building data center infrastructure for artificial intelligence systems. Fluidstack, which previously operated from the UK and recently announced plans to move its headquarters to New York, is part of a cohort of “neocloud” providers that lease compute capacity for AI development.
The AI Cloud startup has signed multi-year colocation leases worth billions of dollars with Cipher and Terawulf – two of several public Bitcoin mining companies looking to diversify data center revenues beyond Bitcoin mining. In both deals, Google agreed to act as a “safety net” for creditors, pledging to repay lenders if Fluidstack defaults or goes bankrupt.
Such structures underscore the complex financing models emerging around the construction of AI data centers. Bloomberg noted that Meta Platforms secured about $60 billion for data center expansion, about half of which does not appear on its balance sheet as traditional debt.
