Former British deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg has landed a board seat at UK-based neocloud Nscale, alongside fellow ex-Meta exec Sheryl Sandberg and former president of Yahoo Susan Decker.

Nscale, which has datacenters in several European countries as well as the US, confirmed the hires along with the completion of a Series C funding round that secures the rent-a-GPU biz another $2 billion.

Clegg stepped down from his position as Meta’s president of global affairs just over a year ago, a role that saw him serve as chief apologist for Zuckcorp. His departure was seen as necessary to make way for his deputy, who was thought to be more acceptable to the incoming Trump administration.

Sir Nick is also a General Partner at Hiro Capital, a private equity investor focused on emerging tech including AI, robotics, and spatial computing. According to Nscale, the Cleggster brings “deep expertise at the intersection of technology, policy, and global affairs.”

Last year, the former Liberal Democrat party leader hit the headlines when he spoke up in favor of AI companies simply grabbing copyrighted material to train their models. To expect them to seek permission or (heaven forbid) pay to use it – as the British government is considering – would destroy the AI industry, he claimed.

He also criticized the US-UK Tech Prosperity Deal announced in September, arguing it puts more emphasis on encouraging American tech giants to build on British soil instead of investing in homegrown competitors.

Sandberg was chief operating officer at Meta from 2008 to 2022, when she stepped down from the role, but remained on the company’s board until 2024. She is the co-founder of Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, an investment biz jointly managed with her husband.

Last year, Sandberg was sanctioned by a US judge for deleting emails related to a court case over Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, despite being told to preserve the messages.

Decker, the third appointee, was president of former web giant and search engine biz Yahoo in 2007 and 2008, founding Raftr, a social media platform for universities in 2017. She is also currently a board member at a number of other companies, including Costco, Berkshire Hathaway, Chime, and Vox Media. Nscale says Decker brings “sharp financial acumen, governance expertise, and strategic leadership” to the company.

The Series C funding round, which was led by investors Aker ASA and 8090 Industries, values Nscale at $14.6 billion. It was also supported by Dell, Lenovo, and Nvidia, plus Astra Capital Management, Linden Advisors, and others.

At the same time, Nscale says that it has reached an agreement with Aker to roll the Aker-Nscale joint venture fully into Nscale. This was revealed only last year as Stargate Norway, with the goal of constructing a 230 MW datacenter to provide 100,000 Nvidia GPUs for OpenAI by the end of 2026.  

Sandberg, Decker, and Clegg join Nscale’s existing board of directors, which includes Josh Payne, Rael Nurick, Jacob Leschly, and Aker ASA CEO Øyvind Eriksen. ®