Applied Digital Corp. (APLD) is going big on AI infrastructure, and the company just broke ground on what might be its most ambitious project yet. Delta Forge 1, a new AI Factory campus somewhere in the southern United States, is designed to handle the kind of power-hungry computing workloads that hyperscale clients need for modern artificial intelligence applications.

The campus starts with 430 megawatts of total utility power available, which translates to up to 300 megawatts of critical IT load once you account for cooling systems, redundancies, and all the other infrastructure that keeps massive data centers running. That's enough juice to power a small city, and Applied Digital says there's room to expand further starting in 2028.

This isn't just a conventional data center. Delta Forge 1 is purpose-built for high-density AI workloads, meaning it's engineered from the ground up to handle the demanding power integration, advanced cooling requirements, and operational complexity that come with training and running large language models and other compute-intensive AI applications. The first phase includes two 150-megawatt facilities spread across more than 500 acres, and when it's fully operational, the campus is expected to employ over 200 full-time workers plus long-term contractors.

Building AI Factories Like Assembly Lines

Here's the interesting part: Applied Digital isn't treating this as a one-off project. The company sees Delta Forge 1 as the next iteration of a repeatable model it's been developing through its Polaris Forge campuses in North Dakota. Think of it as an AI Factory blueprint that can be replicated across different markets without starting from scratch each time.

The thesis is straightforward. As AI adoption accelerates, the bottleneck isn't just having access to power—it's converting that power into usable AI capacity quickly and reliably at scale. Applied Digital believes its standardized approach lets it expand efficiently while maintaining performance and reliability standards that hyperscale customers demand.

And those customers are paying attention. The company is already in discussions with another prospective investment-grade hyperscale client for Delta Forge 1, adding to the two hyperscalers it's already secured in the region. Management says it's also holding advanced talks with another hyperscale customer across multiple U.S. markets. Initial operations at Delta Forge 1 are expected to begin in mid-2027.

Strong Earnings Fuel the Expansion

This expansion push comes on the heels of a solid second-quarter earnings report that exceeded Wall Street expectations. Applied Digital posted breakeven earnings of zero cents per share, which might not sound exciting until you realize analysts were expecting a loss. Revenue came in at $126.6 million, well above forecasts and significantly higher than the year-ago period.

The high-performance computing hosting business drove the results, generating $85 million in quarterly revenue. The data center hosting segment added another $41.6 million, up 15% year over year. Management pointed to sustained demand from hyperscale customers and credited the company's early positioning in energy-rich regions like the Dakotas, where power availability and cost structures make large-scale AI infrastructure projects economically viable.

Investors have noticed. Applied Digital's stock surged 268% over the past 12 months, driven by its growth pipeline, substantial order backlog, and increasing demand for AI infrastructure capable of handling next-generation workloads in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, networking, and blockchain applications.

APLD Price Action: Applied Digital shares were down 2.68% at $34.11 at the time of publication on Thursday.