• In November, the company said that the whole 100-megawatt building at the Polaris Forge 1 campus in North Dakota was officially ready for service.
• In late October, Applied Digital announced that it had entered into a lease agreement with a U.S.-based investment-grade hyperscaler at Polaris Forge 2 Campus.
• Applied Digital this week said it has served as the lead investor in a $25 million funding round for Corintis. 

Applied Digital, founded nearly five years ago by Wesley Cummins and Jason Zhang, started out operating large U.S. data centers for bitcoin miners. Now, the company has also jumped onto the AI bandwagon.

A decision that has now resulted in its stock soaring a whopping 307% this year, as the company launched its first AI data center and received a $5 billion AI factory lease from a U.S.-based investment-grade hyperscaler. Last year, the stock managed to eke out gains of just over 13%.

Cummins has said that in the middle of 2022, both Zhang and he explored other business lines that could utilize its large power sites and develop a path for high-power-density data centers offering high-performance computing.

This move was reflected in their decision to rename the company from Applied Blockchain to Applied Digital. The company has now grown into a major provider of next-generation data center infrastructure for AI.

From Crypto To First AI Data Center Launch

Applied Digital built high-density, energy-efficient data centers specifically for Bitcoin and other blockchains. This was the year that the first AI data center went into action. Applied Digital in October said that its Polaris Forge 1 AI Factory Campus in North Dakota was ready for service for the first phase, 50 megawatts of the planned 100-megawatt facility.

In November, the company said the entire 100-megawatt building at the Polaris Forge 1 campus in North Dakota was officially ready for service. The milestone underscores Applied Digital's execution as the company scales its AI infrastructure to meet contracted demand.

The hyperscale tenant at Polaris Forge 1 is CoreWeave, and the building marks the initial delivery of a fully leased 400-megawatt critical IT load deployment for the company under approximately 15-year lease agreements. It represents about $11 billion in anticipated lease revenue.

The $5 Billion AI Factory Lease

In late October, Applied Digital announced that it had entered into a lease agreement with a U.S.-based investment-grade hyperscaler at Polaris Forge 2 Campus, currently under construction in North Dakota.

This lease represents about $5 billion in total contracted revenue over an estimated 15-year lease term and covers 200 megawatts of critical IT load, purpose-built to support the Hyperscaler's AI and high-performance compute infrastructure.

The second AI data center news showed that Applied Digital's total leased capacity with two of the world's largest hyperscalers across its Polaris Forge 1 and Polaris Forge 2 campuses in North Dakota has now reached 600 megawatts.

APLD's AI Investments

Applied Digital this week said it has served as the lead investor in a $25 million funding round for Corintis. The Swiss-based company develops advanced chip-cooling solutions designed to significantly improve efficiency and power density in data centers running the most demanding AI workloads.

The company has also received initial funding from its previously disclosed perpetual preferred equity financing facility, up to $5.0 billion, with Macquarie Asset Management. The first draw of $112.5 million was funded in October by Macquarie-managed funds and was to support the build-out of Applied Digital's AI Factory campus, the Polaris Forge 1.

In October, Craig-Hallum noted that Applied Digital is successfully turning North Dakota into a data center hub, with a path to significantly more signed capacity in the future. 

What Is Retail Thinking?

Retail sentiment on Stocktwits for Applied Digital jumped to 'bullish' from 'bearish' territory a month ago, when concerns about an AI bubble began to emerge and diverted attention to volatile markets.

The message volumes on the stock were at 'normal' levels, according to data from Stocktwits. The retail user message count on Applied Digital has jumped by over 500% in the last seven days, while the Stocktwits watchlist has soared by 274%.

A bullish user on Stocktwits noted that Applied Digital would be a“massive” company.

Shares of Applied Digital have jumped nearly 200% in the last 12 months.

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