Compute & Cloud
Fluidstack in talks for $1B round at $18B valuation
Fluidstack is reportedly in talks to raise $1 billion at an $18 billion valuation, potentially doubling its worth just months after its previous funding round.
Fluidstack, a startup that builds specialized data centers for artificial intelligence, is in talks to raise a $1 billion funding round. According to a report by Bloomberg, the deal could value the company at $18 billion and is potentially led by the financial firm Jane Street. Should this deal come to fruition, it would more than double Fluidstack’s valuation in a matter of months, highlighting the intense demand for specialized AI infrastructure. Fluidstack did not respond to a request for comment.
The current negotiations follow a previous funding effort in December, when the company was reportedly raising around $700 million at a $7.5 billion valuation, though it did not formally announce the close of that round. That earlier round was reportedly led by Situational Awareness, an AGI-focused fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner. Other backers in that round included Stripe’s Collison brothers, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and AI investor Daniel Gross. Talks for that funding round apparently continued into February, when Google was considering investing at least $100 million, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
Fluidstack’s rapid valuation growth is anchored by its commercial traction, notably a $50 billion deal signed with Anthropic in November to build custom data centers in the U.S., specifically in Texas and New York. Unlike hyperscalers—large cloud providers like AWS that serve various computing needs—Fluidstack focuses on infrastructure built specifically for AI. While Anthropic primarily uses AWS and Google Cloud to serve its Claude models, and partners with Microsoft, the deal with Fluidstack gives it more direct control over its cloud infrastructure.
The scale of this U.S. expansion has shifted the startup’s geographic focus. Originally spun out of Oxford, Fluidstack relocated its headquarters from the U.K. to New York. Last month, the company also pulled out of a key €10 billion AI project in France to focus on U.S. opportunities, Bloomberg reported. Beyond Anthropic, Fluidstack provides infrastructure to customers including Meta, Poolside, and Black Forest Labs. Prior to the Anthropic partnership, the startup was best known for providing infrastructure to Mistral.
Why it matters
The deal would more than double Fluidstack’s valuation in a matter of months, underscoring the rapid growth of the startup’s specialized AI data center business.