Applied Digital shares rose about 5% after the company switched on another 75 MW of capacity at its Polaris Forge 1 AI data center campus in North Dakota. The milestone lifts the site's live critical IT load to 250 MW, with 150 MW still to build before the campus reaches its planned 400 MW.
Applied Digital shares climbed roughly 5% after the Nasdaq-listed data center developer announced another chunk of its North Dakota AI campus had gone live. The move came once the company said the second phase of Building 2 at its Polaris Forge 1 campus in Ellendale had reached Ready for Service status.
75 MW more live capacity
The newly activated phase added 75 MW of critical IT load, pushing the site's operational total to 250 MW. The capacity spans three data halls rated at 25 MW each, completing the building's full 150 megawatts. It follows two earlier milestones at the same site: an initial 100 MW building, then a first 75 MW phase of Building 2.
The campus is designed to eventually reach 400 MW of critical IT load, leaving 150 MW still to build. It is already fully leased, with CoreWeave as the anchor customer. According to the Motley Fool, CEO Wes Cummins said the update "further demonstrates our ability to turn large-scale power into operational AI infrastructure."
Volume runs well above average
Nasdaq-listed APLD traded up more than 5%, with the session high topping $26.85 before shares settled around $25.38. Volume reached 26.3 million shares, well above the stock's average of 17.4 million. That move lifted Applied Digital's market cap to $7.2 billion.
The backlog behind the build-out
Polaris Forge 1 is one piece of a larger pipeline. Applied Digital now has about 1.41 GW of contracted critical IT load across five AI Factory campuses, representing roughly $36.2 billion in base-term revenue over initial 15-year lease terms. The company, once one of numerous cryptocurrency miners pivoting into AI infrastructure, reports fiscal Q1 2027 results on October 7, 2026.
Sources: Crypto Briefing, The Motley Fool
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