Ai datacenter startup fluidstack in talks for 1b round at 18b valuation months after hitting 7 5b says report

Ai datacenter startup fluidstack in talks for 1b round at 18b valuation months after hitting 7 5b says report

According to Bloomberg reporting, Fluidstack — the startup that builds purpose-built data centers for artificial intelligence companies — is currently in negotiations to raise a new $1 billion funding round that would value the business at $18 billion. The round is potentially set to be led by Jane Street if talks reach a successful close.

If this deal is finalized, it would more than double Fluidstack’s valuation in just a matter of months. Back in December, sources told Bloomberg the company was already raising roughly $700 million at a $7.5 billion valuation, though that earlier round never received a formal closing announcement. That fundraising effort was led by Situational Awareness, an AGI-focused venture fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, with backing from high-profile names including Stripe’s Collison brothers, ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and AI investor and entrepreneur Daniel Gross.

Per a February report from The Wall Street Journal, talks for that earlier round were still ongoing at the time, with Google evaluating a $100 million investment into the round.

There is clear justification for the growing investor hype surrounding Fluidstack. Last November, leading AI developer Anthropic announced it had signed a $50 billion deal with the startup to build custom data centers tailored to its needs across Texas and New York. Unlike generalist hyperscale cloud providers such as AWS, which serve a wide range of general computing use cases, all of Fluidstack’s infrastructure is purpose-built exclusively for AI workloads.

The massive Anthropic partnership served as a major vote of confidence for Fluidstack, which remained relatively unknown in U.S. tech circles up to that point. Anthropic primarily relies on AWS and Google Cloud to power its Claude AI assistant, and also holds a partnership with Microsoft to distribute Claude to the tech giant’s enterprise customers. But just like its leading competitor OpenAI, Anthropic’s explosive growth has created an urgent need for additional computing capacity, and the custom deal with Fluidstack gives the AI firm far more control over its own cloud infrastructure.

This partnership was such a transformative win for Fluidstack that the company — which spun out of the University of Oxford and rose to prominence as a rising star in Europe’s AI ecosystem — relocated its global headquarters from the U.K. to New York. Bloomberg also reports that last month, Fluidstack pulled out of a key €10 billion national AI project in France to refocus its resources on high-growth U.S. opportunities.


Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $410.


Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $410.


Beyond its flagship partnership with Anthropic, Fluidstack counts Meta, Poolside, Black Forest Labs, and other leading AI firms as customers. Before the Anthropic deal thrust it into the spotlight, Fluidstack was best known for providing AI infrastructure to European AI startup Mistral.

Fluidstack did not respond to a request for comment on the ongoing funding talks.

Related Article