AI infrastructure startup Fluidstack is in advanced discussions to raise $1 billion in fresh capital, with a proposed valuation of $18 billion, according to people familiar with the matter cited in a Bloomberg report. The round may be led by Jane Street, signaling growing institutional conviction in specialized AI infrastructure providers.

If completed, the transaction would mark a rapid valuation expansion, more than doubling the company’s worth within months.

Fluidstack’s latest fundraising push follows a previously reported effort in December to secure approximately $700 million at a $7.5 billion valuation. That round, which was not formally closed publicly, was said to involve backing from Situational Awareness, alongside high-profile investors including Patrick Collison and John Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and investor Daniel Gross.

Talks for the current round were still active as recently as February, with Google reportedly evaluating a $100 million participation, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Anthropic Partnership Anchors Strategic Momentum

Investor enthusiasm around Fluidstack aligns with its landmark agreement with Anthropic. In November, Anthropic announced that it had signed a $50 billion deal with the startup to build data centers custom-designed for its needs in Texas and New York.

Unlike hyperscale providers such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, Fluidstack focuses exclusively on infrastructure optimized for artificial intelligence workloads. This specialization positions the company at the center of a structural shift in compute demand.

Anthropic primarily uses AWS and Google Cloud to serve Claude (though it also has a partnership with Microsoft to supply Claude to that software giant’s customers). However, its accelerating growth has intensified the need for dedicated capacity, making bespoke infrastructure increasingly strategic.

The Anthropic partnership has reshaped Fluidstack’s geographic and operational priorities. The company relocated its headquarters from the U.K. to New York, reinforcing its focus on the U.S. as the primary battleground for AI infrastructure deployment.

Additionally, Fluidstack withdrew from a €10 billion AI initiative in France to concentrate resources on American expansion. This pivot underscores a broader industry trend: capital, talent, and compute capacity are converging in regions with immediate enterprise-scale demand.

Expanding Customer Base Signals Broader Adoption

Beyond Anthropic, Fluidstack serves a growing roster of AI-native companies, including Meta, Poolside, and Black Forest Labs. The company previously gained visibility through its infrastructure support for Mistral, one of Europe’s prominent AI challengers.

Moreover, this diversified customer base highlights increasing demand for specialized compute environments tailored to model training and inference at scale.

Fluidstack’s rise reflects a deeper transformation across the cloud ecosystem. As AI workloads diverge from traditional enterprise computing, startups offering purpose-built infrastructure are emerging as credible alternatives to hyperscalers.

Therefore, the company’s funding trajectory signals more than investor optimism—it indicates a structural reallocation of capital toward AI-native infrastructure layers. The outcome of this funding round could further validate a new category of cloud providers built exclusively for machine learning scale. Fluidstack did not respond to a request for comment.