APLD
Another AI campus, another giant checkmark
Applied Digital is turning into the data-center version of a kid who keeps getting picked first for dodgeball. The company said it signed a new long-term lease at Delta Forge 2 for 210 MW of critical IT load, and the deal could mean about $5.2 billion in base-term revenue before renewals kick in.
This is the fifth AI Factory campus lease in the books, which is a pretty wild run by any standard. The customer is the same unnamed U.S.-based investment-grade hyperscaler that already signed at Delta Forge 1, so this isn't some one-off spreadsheet victory lap — it's a repeat relationship, and those tend to matter a lot in infrastructure land.
The money machine keeps humming
The company says its contracted portfolio now sits around $36 billion across five campuses, or $86 billion if every renewal option gets exercised. That's the kind of backlog number that makes investors sit up straight, especially when the AI buildout trade is still all about who can actually secure power and land fast enough.
On top of that, Applied Digital also floated a proposed $1.59 billion senior secured notes offering through APLD ComputeCo 3 LLC. The cash is earmarked mainly for building out the fourth building at Polaris Forge 1 in North Dakota, plus repaying an existing Goldman Sachs bridge loan. In other words: growth is expensive, and Applied Digital is reaching for the corporate credit card to keep the construction machine moving.
Why investors care
The stock has already been on a heater, and news like this reinforces the bull case: more signed revenue, more scale, more evidence hyperscalers still want capacity yesterday. But there's a catch — this is capital-hungry business, so the upside story comes with financing risk glued to it.
Big picture: Applied Digital is acting less like a data-center landlord and more like an AI power utility in training. If it keeps landing tenants, the market will keep cheering; if financing gets messy, the cheers could get a little quieter.