DEPLOYDatabase

Company

Applied Digital

Applied Digital is a Nasdaq-listed data center developer (ticker APLD) that started as a Bitcoin-hosting operator and pivoted, from 2023 on, into building…

Founded
2021
HQ
Dallas, Texas, USA
Status
private

Overview

Applied Digital is a Nasdaq-listed data center developer (ticker APLD) that started as a Bitcoin-hosting operator and pivoted, from 2023 on, into building large HPC and AI campuses on the Northern Plains. Its flagship site, Polaris Forge 1 in Ellendale, North Dakota (originally the "Ellendale HPC" project), is the anchor of a 15-year lease with CoreWeave; the first 100 MW building was fully energized in November 2025 and a second building came online July 2026.

The company is one of the very few pure-play AI-factory landlords at gigawatt scale outside the traditional colocation majors.\n\nIn late 2025 Applied Digital reorganized around the landlord model. It signed a roughly $5 billion, multi-hundred-megawatt AI-factory lease with an unnamed US investment-grade hyperscaler at Polaris Forge 2, crossed 1 GW of contracted capacity at Polaris Forge 3 by May 2026, and in June 2026 opened a fifth campus with a 210 MW lease at Delta Forge 2.

At the same time it separated its GPU cloud business into a standalone company, ChronoScale, via a combination with EKSO announced in December 2025, so that the parent no longer sells GPU hours and does not disclose an operator-owned GPU fleet or hourly pricing.\n\nWhat makes Applied Digital distinctive versus the rest of the neocloud pack is that it competes on the physical layer rather than the compute layer. It sits closer to QTS, Vantage or DataBank than to CoreWeave or Nebius: hyperscaler-grade liquid-cooled shells, financed with senior secured notes (a $2.35 billion issue in November 2025 and a $1.59 billion issue in June 2026) and Macquarie development loans, and leased to a single anchor tenant per building on long dated terms.

Verified record

Verified deployments
None on file
Active incidents
None on file

Key facts

Axis classification

OFF-AXIS — data center developer for AI computing, not a physical AI system maker, operator, or regulator

Exchange & ticker

Nasdaq: APLD

Positioning

AI-factory landlord (data center developer/operator); no longer runs its own GPU cloud after spinning out ChronoScale in Dec 2025

Anchor tenant

CoreWeave holds a 15-year lease across Polaris Forge 1 (Ellendale, ND); Phase 1 reached ready-for-service Oct 27, 2025 and the first 100 MW building was fully energized Nov 24, 2025

Second hyperscaler lease

~$5 billion AI-factory lease with an unnamed US investment-grade hyperscaler at Polaris Forge 2 in North Dakota, announced Oct 22, 2025

Contracted capacity milestone

Surpassed 1 GW of contracted capacity at Polaris Forge 3, announced May 20, 2026

Fifth campus

210 MW lease at Delta Forge 2 signed Jun 8, 2026, extending the AI-factory franchise model to a fifth campus

Cloud business spin-out

Cloud/GPU business separated as ChronoScale via a business combination with EKSO, announced Dec 29, 2025 and completed May 5, 2026

Recent debt financing

$2.35B senior secured notes (Nov 2025), $1.59B senior secured notes for Polaris Forge 1 Building 4 (Jun 9, 2026), $550M revolving credit facility (Jun 8, 2026)

Macquarie relationship

Development loan facility with Macquarie Asset Management supporting the AI-factory campuses; two $787.5M draws in 2025 and an expanded facility in Dec 2025

GPU fleet & hourly pricing

Not disclosed by the parent post-spinout; Applied Digital does not sell GPU-hours after separating the cloud business into ChronoScale

Polaris Forge 1 +75 MW RFS; campus 250 MW operational / 400 MW contracted (company-stated, Oct 2026)

Company-stated (company-stated): on Oct 2 2026 Applied Digital announced Ready for Service for the second phase of Building 2 at Polaris Forge 1 (Ellendale, North Dakota), delivering an additional 75 MW of critical IT load across three 25 MW data halls. Completes Building 2's full 150 MW critical IT load and brings fully operational critical IT load at Polaris Forge 1 to 250 MW. Campus is fully leased and contracted to deliver 400 MW of critical IT load at full buildout. Cap: company IR primary; operational figure is critical IT load, not utility interconnection.

Data & sources

Press releases

4

Web sources

2

6 sources backing this record.View all →

Current leadership (5)

  • Wes Cummins Chairman & CEO, CEO, Founderreported, not verified
  • Jason Zhang President & Co-Founder, Founderreported, not verified
  • Saidal Mohmand Chief Financial Officerreported, not verified
  • Laura Laltrello Chief Operating Officerreported, not verified
  • Todd Gale Chief Development Officerreported, not verified

Founders (3)

See all founders across the registry →

Safety record

No incidents on record for Applied Digital.

Only active incidents are counted. Retracted incidents are excluded from this summary but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.

Full safety record: incidents, sourcing, and exposure data →

Applied Digital on the data-center map

Every verified data center Applied Digital operates that has a mapped coordinate (19 total). Filled circles are Tier-2 facilities and Tier-1 campuses under this operator; click any pin to open its record.

Applied Digital data centers (19)

AI data centers Applied Digital operates or is a party to, from the DEPLOY data center registry.

Recent coverage

Applied Digital in third-party press