Acceptance testing and when fees start

When does the service term, and the obligation to pay, start?

In GPU capacity contracts the service term and the fees usually start on acceptance, not delivery. The length of the acceptance period and whether silence counts as acceptance decide when the debt starts to be serviced. Boost Run’s contract with Cohere tests each rack against an NVIDIA validation report, gives seven business days, treats silence or a production workload as acceptance, and pushes the end date back day for day so a late rack still gets its full term. Anthropic’s order with Nscale also deems silence to be acceptance, but no fees start until the whole tranche is accepted.

Randeep Bubbra | Lawyer | Making the next generation of infrastructure financeable · Firm profile · Updated 29 October 2026

What the filed contracts say

Contract	What the filed wording says
Nscale / Microsoft SOW	The service term of each tranche begins on acceptance. Microsoft has 35 days to test the first tranche (and the first after a technology change) and 5 days for the rest.
IREN / Microsoft SOW	Silence is acceptance: no rejection notice within the acceptance period means the tranche is accepted.
Sharon AI MSA	Two weeks of testing against criteria agreed before go-live, unless the service order says otherwise.
CoreWeave / Microsoft MSA	Fees are payable after Microsoft accepts the services and receives a proper invoice.
Boost Run–Cohere service agreement	The customer has seven business days from the ready-for-testing notice and the NVIDIA validation report to test each rack.
Boost Run–Cohere service agreement	Silence or placing a production workload on a rack is deemed acceptance.
Boost Run–Cohere service agreement	Fees for a rack start on acceptance, and late acceptance extends the term day for day.
Anthropic / Nscale GPU order	Anthropic tests each delivered tranche against written acceptance criteria and must give reasons, with evidence, for rejecting it.
Anthropic / Nscale GPU order	Silence through the acceptance period is deemed acceptance.
Anthropic / Nscale GPU order	No payment starts until the whole tranche is accepted and fully available.

The filed wording

The Service Term of each GPU Service will begin upon its Acceptance by Microsoft in accordance with the acceptance process described in Section 2 and end on the Service End Date provided in Table 1.

Nscale–Microsoft partner statement of work (Narvik), section 1.1(a) · Nscale S-1, Exhibit 10.19

Late delivery: delay credits and the long-stop Pay without set-off: the hell or high water clause Put it on an issues list All contract clauses

On the deal pages

Financings by the parties to these contracts

The latest debt raised by the companies that signed them, with the terms and the sources on each deal page.

Financing	Borrower or issuer	Date	Amount
GPU secured loan	Sharon AI	1 October 2026	US$356m
CoreWeave 2.875% convertible senior notes due 2033	CoreWeave	18 September 2026	US$4.2bn
Pre-IPO convertible loan-note subscription (initial minimum)	Nscale	15 September 2026	US$2.1bn
Dell short-term equipment lease payment schedules (aggregate)	Nscale	4 September 2026	US$2.54bn
North Carolina GPU DDTL	Nscale	31 August 2026	US$1.2bn

Method

Each extract is quoted from the contract as filed with the SEC, checked against the filed text when it was added; “…” marks words left out. Filers redact commercial terms, so a [***] or [*] is the filer's, not ours. The summaries describe the wording, not how a court would read it, and each contract's defined terms and other clauses can change the effect. General information drawn from public filings. It is not legal advice on any transaction, and using this page does not create a lawyer-client relationship. Views are personal.