On November 5, the UK's Financial Times reported that Nscale, the UK's most valuable AI startup, failed to secure a potential new agreement worth tens of billions of dollars with Microsoft, casting fresh doubt on its $35 billion IPO ambitions. Three people familiar with the matter said Microsoft declined to more than double the scale of an existing contract to lease computing capacity at a data center in Texas. As a result, Nscale must now find new customers for the facility or risk forgoing billions of dollars in future revenue. Meanwhile, mounting discontent over AI data center construction across the United States has become one of the reasons voters withheld support from incumbent Republican candidates in Tuesday's midterm elections. In some states, including Texas, incoming Democratic governors are calling for an immediate moratorium on data center development projects.