A rush of capital across the AI stack is signaling where value is consolidating: in enterprise software that strips out operational drag and in the industrial buildout required to run it. DualEntry’s $90 million Series A, Nscale’s new $433 million raise days after a record Series B, and BlackRock’s reported move on Aligned Data Centers capture the same thesis. AI that solves business workflows needs reliable, affordable compute at scale, and markets are funding both sides of that equation.
On the application layer, New York based DualEntry secured $90 million in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, with GV participating, valuing the one year old company at $415 million. DualEntry targets the enormous ERP market, which investors peg at $500 billion, by going after mid market firms that have outgrown entry level accounting software such as QuickBooks but hesitate to undertake traditional ERP migrations to incumbents like Oracle NetSuite, Sage, and Acumatica. The company positions its AI native platform as an automation layer for financial workflows, anchored by NextDay Migration, a service it says can transfer historical financial data from legacy systems to DualEntry in 24 hours. That implementation timeline is intended to replace months long projects that often depend on networks of third party consultants billing by the hour. CEO Santiago Nestares called typical ERP onboarding a clunky process and said the goal is to get businesses live in 24 hours. Lightspeed partner Ravi Mhatre framed the approach as training AI to act like data consultants who perform migration and drastically accelerate the process. With roughly 40 employees and customers that range from startups to a publicly listed company, DualEntry plans to use the new capital to expand its team, speed product development, and enter new markets. The push toward automation lands as the accounting industry faces a looming talent crunch, which raises the stakes for tools that can remove manual work.
All of that software ambition rests on a swelling base of compute and power. In London, AI infrastructure provider Nscale announced another $433 million via a Pre Series C SAFE on October 1, only days after confirming what it called Europe’s biggest Series B at $1.1 billion on September 25. The new infusion includes Blue Owl Managed Funds, Nvidia, Dell, and Nokia, which all participated in the Series B led by Norway’s Aker ASA with support from Fidelity Management and Research Company, G Squared, and T.Capital. Founded 18 months ago, Nscale describes itself as an AI native infrastructure platform that vertically integrates compute, networking, storage, managed software, and AI services in company owned and co located data centers. The pipeline is aggressive. Stargate Norway, a tie up with OpenAI, aims to deliver 100,000 Nvidia GPUs by the end of 2026 with potential to scale tenfold. Stargate U.K. involves Nscale and OpenAI, along with Nvidia. In Loughton, Essex, Nscale and Microsoft plan what press materials call the U.K.’s largest AI supercomputer with 50 megawatts of capacity, scalable to 90 megawatts, initially housing 23,040 Nvidia GPUs and targeting opening in the first quarter of 2027, with construction in planning. CEO Josh Payne said the follow on financing just days after the Series B represents a powerful endorsement of a vision to deliver sovereign, scalable infrastructure. The company said that being based in Europe but operating globally allows its data centers to draw on some of the lowest cost renewable energy in the world to meet regulatory requirements and pass savings to customers. Structure matters too. The Pre Series C SAFE means investors provide funding now in return for equity later, which is a flexible way to add capacity quickly as demand for GPUs accelerates.
The infrastructure land grab extends to mature assets. BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners is in advanced talks to acquire Aligned Data Centers, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter. The transaction could value Aligned at about $40 billion and would rank as one of the year’s biggest deals. Bloomberg characterized Aligned as a major beneficiary of AI spending, and the report said an agreement could be announced within days. The buyer and seller were not quoted, and the deal has not been announced, but the signal is clear: private capital is moving to own the platforms that provision power, cooling, and racks for AI workloads.
The through line is not hype. It is a pragmatic bet on where enterprise budgets are moving. DualEntry is attacking the cost and time of ERP migrations that block modernization. Nscale is building the compute and energy footprint that enterprise AI will consume, with OEMs and chip suppliers in the cap table. BlackRock is eyeing the downstream operators that turn capital into usable capacity. Application friction is the demand driver. Data centers and GPUs are the supply constraint.
Conclusion: Enterprise AI is cohering around speed and scale. The winners will compress time to value for customers while securing predictable access to power and compute. Investors are funding both because the two rise together.