Applied Digital
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Last reviewed
Jun 7, 2026
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Applied Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: APLD) is a United States designer, builder, and operator of large data centers for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The company started as a cryptocurrency hosting business under the name Applied Blockchain, went public on the Nasdaq in April 2022, and later repositioned itself as a developer of purpose-built "AI factory" campuses that it builds, owns, and leases to compute tenants. Its defining contracts are a series of long-term leases with the GPU cloud provider CoreWeave at the Polaris Forge 1 campus in Ellendale, North Dakota, which together cover 400 megawatts (MW) of capacity and an estimated $11 billion of contracted lease revenue. Applied Digital is led by founder, chairman, and chief executive Wes Cummins.
The current business dates to late 2020, when Cummins, a technology investor for more than two decades, and Jason Zhang began building data center operations to host large-scale computing. Cummins founded the investment firm 272 Capital LP in February 2020 (later sold to B. Riley) and had earlier been president of B. Riley and Co.; he has served as chairman and CEO of Applied Digital since 2021, and Zhang serves as co-founder and chief strategy officer. The company was renamed Applied Blockchain in 2021 and completed an initial public offering on April 13, 2022, selling 8 million shares at $5.00 each for roughly $40 million in gross proceeds on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
The early model was colocation hosting for Bitcoin mining and other blockchain workloads, which need cheap power and simple, dense buildings. Applied Blockchain built two hosting sites in North Dakota: a 180 MW facility in Ellendale (groundbreaking in September 2022) and a site in Jamestown. Marathon Digital (now MARA Holdings) was the anchor hosting customer at both locations. In late 2022 the company renamed itself Applied Digital to signal ambitions beyond crypto, and over the following two years it pivoted toward infrastructure for AI and high-performance computing, the workloads driving the surge in demand for accelerated compute.
In September 2024 Applied Digital raised about $160 million in a private placement in which NVIDIA participated, making the chipmaker a visible strategic backer. NVIDIA held roughly 7.7 million APLD shares from the third quarter of 2024, a position later valued at about $177 million. A 13F filing disclosed in early 2026 showed that NVIDIA had sold its entire stake as of December 31, 2025, and the news weighed on the stock.
Applied Digital's go-forward business is that of a data center developer and landlord rather than a compute operator. It designs, builds, and owns the buildings (which it markets as "AI factories"), provides the power, cooling, and physical shell, and leases the finished space to a tenant under long-term agreements of roughly 15 years. The tenant, such as CoreWeave, installs and operates its own graphics processing units (GPUs) and sells cloud compute to its own customers. Applied Digital's revenue in this model is contracted rent, closer to that of a specialized real estate operator than a cloud company.
That structure is deliberately separate from being a cloud provider itself. Applied Digital had also operated a Cloud Services business in which it bought NVIDIA GPUs, stood up clusters, and rented accelerated compute directly to enterprise and AI customers. Because that cloud unit competed with the very hyperscale tenants the company wanted to sign as data center customers, the board decided to separate it. Management has framed the split as a move to a pure-play data center business that lowers the cost of capital and keeps open the option of converting to a real estate investment trust. Historically the company reported a Data Center Hosting segment (the crypto colocation sites) and a Cloud Services segment; the new build-to-suit AI campuses form the third and now central line.
The anchor of Applied Digital's AI strategy is CoreWeave, a GPU cloud provider whose largest customer is Microsoft. On June 2, 2025 Applied Digital announced two leases of approximately 15 years for 250 MW of critical IT load at its Ellendale campus, branded Polaris Forge 1, with anticipated total revenue of about $7 billion over the term. The first building (100 MW) was targeted for service in the fourth quarter of 2025 and the second (150 MW) for the middle of 2026, with CoreWeave holding an option on an additional 150 MW.
CoreWeave exercised that option, and on August 29, 2025 Applied Digital finalized the additional 150 MW lease. That brought the total contracted capacity to 400 MW and lifted anticipated total lease revenue to roughly $11 billion, with the third building expected to reach full service in 2027. The Polaris Forge 1 campus is engineered to scale to 1 gigawatt (GW) over time. Applied Digital reached its first operational milestone at the campus in October 2025, energizing an initial 50 MW phase, and subsequently completed a second phase that fully energized the first 100 MW building for CoreWeave.
| Date | Milestone | Capacity | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 14, 2025 | Macquarie perpetual preferred equity facility (HPC business) | Funds 400 MW Ellendale plus pipeline | Up to $5.0 billion |
| June 2, 2025 | Two ~15-year CoreWeave leases at Ellendale | 250 MW | ~$7 billion |
| August 29, 2025 | Additional CoreWeave lease finalized | +150 MW (400 MW total) | ~$11 billion total |
| October 2025 | First phase energized (Polaris Forge 1, Building 1) | 50 MW | Operational |
| December 29, 2025 | Cloud business spin-out (ChronoScale) announced | n/a | ~$75.2M cloud revenue |
To fund the capital-intensive Ellendale build-out, Applied Digital turned to Macquarie Asset Management (MAM). On January 14, 2025 the company agreed to a perpetual preferred equity financing facility of up to $5.0 billion for its HPC business, conducted through a subsidiary called APLD HPC Holdings LLC. Under the terms, MAM invests $2.25 million for each executed lease of 1 MW of capacity, up to $900 million to support the full 400 MW Ellendale campus, taking the form of perpetual preferred units plus a 15 percent common equity interest while Applied Digital retains 85 percent of the HPC assets. The preferred carries a 12.75 percent annual dividend, payable in kind or in cash. MAM also received a right of first refusal on future HPC project funding of up to an additional $4.1 billion for 30 months after closing. Proceeds were earmarked to repay about $180 million of existing bridge debt and to let Applied Digital recover more than an estimated $300 million of its own equity in the Ellendale campus.
The partnership funded in stages. Applied Digital executed the first funding milestone in 2025 and announced a second draw of $787.5 million to advance the Polaris Forge 1 and Polaris Forge 2 campuses. In December 2025 it added a development loan facility with Macquarie Group to provide pre-lease development capital for new campuses.
Applied Digital concentrated its AI build-out in North Dakota, citing abundant low-cost power, available land, and a cool climate that reduces cooling costs. Polaris Forge 1 at Ellendale is designed for 400 MW of critical IT load and engineered to scale toward 1 GW, and the company has said it has more than 1 GW of power across its sites in various stages of load study.
A second campus, Polaris Forge 2, was announced on August 18, 2025 near Harwood, North Dakota, north of Fargo. It is a roughly $3 billion project with an initial 280 MW, sited on more than 900 contracted acres, with power secured through Cass County Electric Cooperative and the ability to scale beyond the initial capacity. Applied Digital planned to break ground in September 2025, with initial capacity in 2026 and full capacity in early 2027, and projected more than 200 full-time jobs once operational.
| Site | Location | Capacity | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ellendale (ELN01) | Ellendale, ND | 180 MW | Crypto / data center hosting |
| Jamestown (JMS01) | Jamestown, ND | ~106 MW | Crypto / data center hosting |
| Polaris Forge 1 | Ellendale, ND | 400 MW (to 1 GW) | AI/HPC leasing to CoreWeave |
| Polaris Forge 2 | Harwood, ND | 280 MW (scalable) | AI/HPC build-out |
On December 29, 2025 Applied Digital announced that it would spin out its cloud computing arm, Applied Digital Cloud, by combining it with EKSO Bionics Holdings, a small publicly traded exoskeleton company that had been pursuing strategic alternatives. The combined entity is to be renamed ChronoScale Corporation and listed on the Nasdaq under the symbol CHRN, with Applied Digital owning approximately 97 percent of it. The cloud business generated about $75.2 million of revenue in the twelve months ended August 31, 2025. The transaction was structured to let Applied Digital separate its accelerated-compute platform from its data center ownership business so that each can scale independently, and it was expected to close in the first half of 2026, subject to due diligence, definitive agreements, regulatory clearance, and shareholder approval.
For fiscal 2025, the year ended May 31, 2025, Applied Digital reported total revenue of $144.2 million from continuing operations, up 6 percent year over year, and a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $161.0 million. Fourth-quarter revenue was $38.0 million, up 41 percent, all from the Data Center Hosting segment, and the company ended the year with $120.9 million in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash. During the year, the Cloud Services business met the criteria to be classified as held for sale and reported as discontinued operations.
Revenue accelerated sharply once the CoreWeave lease began contributing. For the fiscal third quarter of 2026, the quarter ended February 28, 2026 and reported on April 8, 2026, Applied Digital posted revenue of $126.6 million, up 139 percent year over year, with a net loss of $100.9 million, adjusted net income of $33.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $44.1 million. The jump reflected the ramp of the first CoreWeave building at Polaris Forge 1 alongside the legacy hosting business.
CoreWeave | NVIDIA | data center | high-performance computing | AI chips