Nscale vs SemiAnalysis

Aker CEO dismisses Microsoft Nscale contract loss as minor

The CEO of Aker ASA, Øyvind Eriksen, the largest investor in UK AI infrastructure startup Nscale, downplayed Microsoft's withdrawal from a data centre deal as a "minor contract". Speaking during Aker's Q3 results presentation, Eriksen reassured investors ahead of Nscale's planned US IPO targeting a $35bn valuation. He noted that since Nscale's Series C funding round, the company's activity and contract portfolio more than doubled, and the termination was expected. Microsoft cancelled the deal to lease compute capacity from Nscale's Essex data centre due to anticipated power supply issues. Nscale is reportedly close to a new multibillion-dollar deal with Anthropic, which would increase its commitment in West Virginia. Aker owns approximately 23% of Nscale, valued at $3.31bn based on the Series C valuation.

• Aker ASA CEO Øyvind Eriksen called Microsoft's cancellation of a data centre deal with Nscale a 'minor contract'.
• Aker owns approximately 23% of Nscale, valued at $3.31bn based on Nscale's Series C valuation.
• Microsoft cancelled the lease agreement due to expected power supply issues at Nscale's Essex data centre.

What 500 leaders from AI-native companies told us about infrastructure

New Nscale research of 500 U.S. AI-native leaders shows how infrastructure choices shape product velocity, engineering capacity, and compliance

Nscale is developing digital twins to scale AI infrastructure

Nscale is exploring how simulation can inform the way it designs, deploys, and operates AI data centers with NVIDIA Omniverse Libraries and NVIDIA DSX Sim.

Unlocking Claude's Full Value: Plans, Workflows, and Setup

This article analyzes the economics of Anthropic's Claude subscription plans, comparing them to OpenAI's offerings. SemiAnalysis found a $200 Claude Max plan provides about $11,700 worth of Claude Opus 5.5 usage at API prices, versus roughly $2,100 for OpenAI's equivalent. Most subscribers use only a small fraction of their allowance, making the plans profitable for Anthropic. Recent product changes, including the merger of Cowork into Claude chat, new model versions (Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 5.5), and monthly API credits on Max and Team plans, make it easier to use the full allowance. The article provides a comprehensive guide with model routing tables, a map of the Claude stack, a 5-layer operating system, and 17 workflows to help users maximize their subscription value.

• SemiAnalysis study published October 5 finds a $200 Claude Max plan provides ~$11,700 of Claude Opus 5.5 API usage, vs ~$2,100 for OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol.
• Anthropic's gross margin on an Opus-heavy Max subscriber is +6% at 20% usage and -369% at full usage.
• Cowork merged into Claude chat on September 16.

How GLM5.3 Sparse Attention Affects HBM Memory Usage

SemiAnalysis analyzes how GLM-5.3's sparse attention affects HBM and NAND memory usage. Sparse attention reduces KV cache memory and bandwidth during attention operations but does not reduce overall memory capacity needs, as top-k selection requires full context in HBM. The SGLang team's HiSparse system offloads KV cache to host DRAM to overcome capacity limits. InferenceX benchmarks show GB200 and GB300 cost advantages over AMD MI355X ATOM at different latency targets, and GLM-5's architecture is suspected to be optimized for Moore Threads MTT S4000.

• GLM-5 (and GLM-5.x) is a 744B total, 40B active-parameter mixture-of-experts model with 1 shared expert and 8 of 256 experts routed per token (sparsity 32).
• HiSparse, designed by the SGLang team, offloads KV cache entries from device HBM to host DRAM using an LRU cache with layer-wise overlapping from HiCache.
• InferenceX benchmarks show GB200 costs approximately $0.044 per million total tokens at 150 tokens/s, about 12% lower than $0.049 for MI355X ATOM.

SemiAnalysis Releases ClusterMAX 3.0 GPU Cloud Ratings

SemiAnalysis released ClusterMAX 3.0, its third GPU cloud rating system for neoclouds, covering 77 providers and expanding its market view to 323. Nebius joined CoreWeave in the Platinum tier, while Google Cloud moved to Gold. The methodology includes audits of compute, networking, storage, orchestration, reliability, and security, and the report introduces standardized SLAs and highlights security concerns. Key trends include financing structures, Blackwell/GB300 deployments, Vera Rubin transition, and agentic coding impact. Separately, Australian AI data center operator Firmus, backed by Nvidia, withdrew its planned IPO due to market volatility. The company had sought to raise $5 billion at a $30.6 billion valuation. It will now pursue private funding after raising $2 billion from Nvidia, Coatue, Blackstone, and Jane Street in August, totaling over $3 billion in equity. Firmus also has agreements with Meta for GPU capacity in Southeast Asia.

• ClusterMAX 3.0 was released covering 77 providers, with the market view expanded to 323 providers.
• Nebius was upgraded to Platinum tier, joining CoreWeave, while Google Cloud moved to Gold.
• Firmus withdrew its planned IPO, citing market volatility, and will pursue private funding.