Nscale left its largest customer Bytedance out of its IPO documentation
The company Nscale does not mention its largest customer, the company Bytedance, which accounted for 73 percent of its revenue in 2025, in its documentation for its IPO in the US. Bytedance accessed AI computing via its subsidiary Spring and Nvidia B200 chips in Norway.
The company Nscale, an AI cloud infrastructure provider backed by the company Nvidia, does not disclose the name of its largest customer, the company Bytedance, in its documentation for its planned IPO in the US. According to the Financial Times, as reported by The Decoder, the company Bytedance accounted for fully 73 percent of the $33 million in revenue of the company Nscale in 2025, yet its name does not appear anywhere in the 192-page S-1 filing. It is mentioned only in an appendix, via the Singapore-based subsidiary Spring.
In May 2025, the company Spring committed to using 2 304 Nvidia B200 chips in a data center in Glomfjord, Norway, previously operated as a cryptocurrency mining farm. The contract served as collateral for a $105 million loan from the company Macquarie, which, together with $35 million in equity, covered the cost of the AI hardware.
The agreement allows the company Bytedance to use Nvidia chips that it cannot buy directly in China due to export restrictions. According to the source, this is a procedure that legally exploits a loophole in US export rules, yet it carries legal and reputational risks. The company Nscale states that it expects the share of the company Bytedance in its revenue to fall below 20 percent this year and to keep declining as large contracts with the companies Microsoft and Anthropic grow.
Why it matters
For investors and analysts following the IPO market for AI infrastructure, this is a signal that publicly available documentation may not reflect the actual concentration of customer risk – a 73 percent dependence on a single customer, mentioned only in an appendix under a different name, is material information for valuing the company. At the same time, the case illustrates a concrete mechanism by which Chinese companies can gain access to Nvidia chips despite US export restrictions through foreign subsidiaries and leased cloud infrastructure, which is relevant for companies and regulators monitoring compliance with export rules.
Relevant practical impact
What this means
For a business
Investors considering participation in the IPO of the company Nscale are getting an incomplete picture of customer concentration, which increases the risk of mispricing the company; at the same time, the agreement with Spring points to a possible way of circumventing US export restrictions on Nvidia chips, which poses a legal and reputational risk for the entire supply chain around AI infrastructure.
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Event sources
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