April 23 - Applied Digital said on Thursday that it has signed a long-term lease valued at $7.5 billion with an unnamed U.S.-based hyperscaler for space at its new Delta Forge 1 site, reinforcing the firm's role as a provider of large-scale data center capacity for artificial intelligence workloads. The stock rallied, with shares climbing more than 12% in early trading after the announcement.
The 15-year agreement secures 300 megawatts of computing capacity at Delta Forge 1, the company reported. The campus has a total design capacity of 430 megawatts and is located in the southern United States. Applied Digital said the customer under this deal becomes its second U.S.-based, investment-grade hyperscale tenant across the company’s data center properties.
With this lease included, Applied Digital said total contracted lease revenue now exceeds $23 billion. The company noted that more than half of its contracted revenue is backed by investment-grade customers, a mix that it said strengthens the predictability of its revenue stream.
The announcement comes amid continued growth in demand for data center capacity capable of supporting advanced AI systems. Applied Digital cited the ongoing investments by major technology companies - including Amazon, Alphabet’s Google, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle - which collectively are commonly referred to as hyperscalers, as drivers of demand for facilities with the power and cooling infrastructure needed for AI workloads.
Delta Forge 1 is Applied Digital’s newest campus, spanning more than 500 acres and purpose-built to host large-scale AI operations. The site is engineered with high-capacity power and cooling systems, and the company expects initial operations at the campus to begin in mid-2027.
Separately, Applied Digital said it expects to obtain up to $600 million in financing to support development. The package would include a $300 million senior secured bridge facility earmarked for development at its Polaris Forge 1 campus and an up to $300 million revolving credit facility intended for broader development and working capital requirements.
Applied Digital builds and operates large data centers designed to support AI, cloud computing and other data-intensive workloads, positioning the company among those benefiting from the expansion of AI infrastructure.
The company’s communications also referenced a subscription-style stock research product. It asked whether an investor should place $2,000 in APLD and described a proprietary tool, ProPicks AI, which evaluates APLD alongside thousands of companies each month using more than 100 financial metrics. The product claims to use AI to generate stock ideas and to identify opportunities by assessing fundamentals, momentum and valuation, and it cited past winners identified by the tool, listing Super Micro Computer and AppLovin with returns shown in the original communication. The announcement included language indicating promotional pricing for the product.