The company says a fully leased North Dakota campus is now 250 MW operational against a 400 MW contracted buildout, without naming the tenant or attaching revenue terms to the delivery.
IN BRIEF: On October 2, 2026, Applied Digital said the second phase of Building 2 at Polaris Forge 1 in Ellendale, North Dakota, reached Ready for Service, adding 75 MW of critical IT load across three 25 MW halls and bringing operational critical IT load at the campus to 250 MW, according to a GlobeNewswire release.
RECORD:
Date: October 2, 2026
Beat: AI infrastructure / data centers
Jurisdiction: United States (Ellendale, North Dakota; company dateline Dallas)
Entity: Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD)
Instrument / cite: GlobeNewswire release 3373779; no filing, docket, or utility instrument cited
Source type: Company press release
Confidence: reported
Record ID: N/A
Source: Globe News Wire
Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) said on October 2, 2026, that the second phase of Building 2 at its Polaris Forge 1 campus in Ellendale, North Dakota, has reached Ready for Service. The phase delivers an additional 75 MW of critical IT load across three 25 MW data halls. The company describes itself as a U.S.-based designer, developer, owner, and operator of large-scale, purpose-built data centers engineered for high-performance computing workloads, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other accelerated-compute applications.
The arithmetic in the release is internal and consistent. The new 75 MW completes Building 2 at a full 150 MW of critical IT load. Combined with the first 100 MW building at Polaris Forge 1 and the initial 75 MW phase of Building 2, fully operational critical IT load at the campus is now 250 MW. The release calls Polaris Forge 1 a fully leased AI Factory Campus, contracted to deliver 400 MW of critical IT load at full buildout. On those figures, 150 MW of contracted critical IT load remains undelivered. The release does not say when that remainder is due, or which building will carry it.
Ready for Service is the company’s label for the milestone, not a defined regulatory status in the text. The release does not state that a customer has accepted the halls, installed equipment, or begun paying rent. It does not name the tenant. “Fully leased” and “contracted to deliver 400 MW” are company characterizations. No lease counterparty, term, rate, or campus-level contracted revenue appears in the announcement. For an enterprise buyer or a limited partner underwriting the site, the operative claim is delivery of capacity the company says is already under contract, not evidence of a new sale.
Wes Cummins, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Applied Digital, is the only named speaker. The release quotes him as follows: “Bringing another 75 MW of AI infrastructure online at Polaris Forge 1 further demonstrates our ability to turn large-scale power into operational AI infrastructure,” said Wes Cummins, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Applied Digital. “Securing power is only the starting point. The real work is designing, building, commissioning, and operating the infrastructure that transforms those megawatts into usable capacity for customers. That is the capability we continue to scale across our platform.”
The quote draws a line the rest of the release does not quantify. Power secured is treated as the start of the work. Design, construction, commissioning, and operations are the steps that turn megawatts into capacity a customer can use. The announcement offers no commissioning log, no power-usage figure, no cooling specification, and no date on which the three halls became available to a named customer. What it does offer is sequence. This delivery follows the first 100 MW building and the initial 75 MW phase of Building 2. The company presents the 250 MW now operational as evidence of a repeatable approach to developing and operating infrastructure purpose-built for advanced AI and high-performance computing.
Place is part of the claim. Polaris Forge 1 is in Ellendale, North Dakota, where Applied Digital says it has operated since 2021 and built long-standing relationships with local leaders, partners, and community stakeholders. As the campus expands, the company says it remains focused on responsible development, local partnership, and creating long-term value in the communities where it builds. No local approval, utility interconnection, or tax arrangement is attached to that sentence.
The release carries no deal economics. Investor and media contacts are listed: media through JSA (Jaymie Scotto & Associates), (856) 264-7827, jsa_applied@jsa.net; investor relations through Matt Glover or Ralf Esper, Gateway Group, Inc., (949) 574-3860, APLD@gateway-grp.com. The company points readers to www.applieddigital.com and to filings at www.sec.gov. This announcement itself is not identified as an 8-K or other Commission filing.
The forward-looking statement, made under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, is the only place the release discusses what can still go wrong. It warns that statements about lease agreements, campus development, the high-performance computing industry, plans and objectives, and future economic performance are inherently uncertain. Among the listed risks: whether customers exercise renewal options under their leases, and that if they do not, the company will not recognize further revenue from such a customer under its respective lease; ability to complete construction as planned; lead time of customer acquisition and leasing decisions; changes in artificial intelligence and HPC infrastructure needs; costs of HPC operations; timely delivery of services required to complete installation under lease agreements; ability to raise capital for construction and operations; ability to obtain financing of datacenter leases; dependence on principal customers and ability to perform under leases with key customers; power or other supply disruptions and equipment failures; regulation; cash flow and access to capital; and conditions in the debt and equity markets. Further risks are referred to the company’s most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q.
That boilerplate is the investor-facing content of an otherwise operational notice. The company is telling the market that 75 MW is online and that Building 2 is complete at 150 MW, while reserving the points a credit committee would ask next: renewal, installation under the lease, financing of the remaining build, and dependence on principal customers. None of those points is resolved in the release. The 250 MW figure is operational critical IT load as Applied Digital defines it. It is not a reported revenue figure, and the release does not convert megawatts into dollars.
WHY IT MATTERS: For a founder or allocator, the usable fact is execution against a contract the company already claims, not a new customer win: 250 MW of 400 MW contracted critical IT load is now described as operational, and the tenant is unnamed in this release. The Cummins quote makes commissioning the product. The risk language makes clear that Ready for Service is not the same thing as recognized lease revenue, completed customer installation, or a renewal.
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