December 15, 2025 — Applied Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: APLD) has become one of the market’s most talked-about “picks-and-shovels” names in the AI boom: not a chipmaker, not a model builder, but a company racing to deliver the hard part of modern AI at scale—power-dense data centers.
That positioning helped propel APLD sharply higher over 2025, but it also made the stock a magnet for volatility. Coming into mid-December, shares were hovering around the high-$20s, after a sharp one-day drop that reminded investors this is still a capital-intensive buildout story with real financing, execution, and tenant risks. 1
Below is a detailed look at the latest Applied Digital stock news, the most-followed forecasts and price targets, and the core debates driving APLD as of 15 December 2025.
Applied Digital stock price action: a huge year, then a gut-check pullback
APLD is entering the week with the kind of tape action traders love and long-term investors… tolerate: big upside punctuated by sudden air pockets.
The stock last closed at $27.86 after falling about 9.4% in a single session (with an unusually wide intraday range), following a multi-month surge that had already made it one of 2025’s standout performers. 1
Applied Digital’s market capitalization has recently been cited around the $7–8 billion range, underscoring how quickly expectations have repriced around its AI infrastructure pivot. 2
What Applied Digital actually does (and why Wall Street suddenly cares)
Applied Digital’s story is essentially a corporate evolution speedrun: it has roots in crypto-related infrastructure, but it’s increasingly framing itself as a high-performance computing (HPC) and AI data center operator—the physical layer required to run dense GPU clusters.
In recent SEC disclosure materials, the company describes two primary segments: a Data Center Hosting business (including crypto-mining customers) and an HPC Hosting business, while also noting its cloud services business was classified as “held for sale” during fiscal 2025. 3
Translation: Applied Digital is trying to become less of a “crypto infrastructure trade” and more of a contracted, long-duration AI infrastructure cash-flow story—the kind investors often value more like digital real estate (especially when backed by long-term leases).
The big catalyst: hyperscaler and CoreWeave leases driving a contracted-revenue narrative
CoreWeave: long-term leases that helped re-rate the stock
One of the defining moments for APLD in 2025 was its long-dated leasing relationship with CoreWeave, a major AI-focused cloud provider. Reuters reported in June that Applied Digital signed two 15-year lease agreements with CoreWeave expected to generate about $7 billion in revenue over the lease term. 4
Later disclosures describe how contracted capacity at the Polaris Forge 1 site built out further. In an S-3 filing, Applied Digital details leases totaling 250 MW and an additional lease for 150 MW, bringing the total under contract at Polaris Forge 1 to 400 MW. 3
A second hyperscaler: the $5 billion Polaris Forge 2 lease
In October, Applied Digital announced a new ~15-year lease with a U.S.-based investment-grade hyperscaler for 200 MW at its Polaris Forge 2 campus—described as ~$5 billion in contracted revenue—pushing total leased capacity across Polaris Forge campuses to 600 MW. 5
The company also said the customer holds a right of first refusal for an additional 800 MW—effectively the campus’s full expansion potential toward 1 GW. 5
This is the core bull case in one sentence: long-term AI demand + scarce power-ready sites + multi-year leases = visibility.
Operations progress: Polaris Forge 1 hits a key “ready for service” milestone
Applied Digital’s narrative doesn’t work unless megawatts turn into delivered capacity on schedule.
In late November, the company reported it achieved “Ready for Service” for the second phase of the first building at Polaris Forge 1, fully energizing a 100 MW building—describing it as the first of three contracted buildings at the campus. 6
That matters because investors are watching a very specific handoff: construction milestones → energized capacity → customer ramp → recurring lease economics.
Financing the buildout: Macquarie preferred equity + $2.35B of senior secured notes
The market likes AI data centers. The market likes them even more when there’s a credible plan to pay for them.
Macquarie partnership: up to $5B preferred equity facility
Applied Digital said it received an initial $112.5 million draw from a previously disclosed up to $5.0 billion perpetual preferred equity facility with Macquarie Asset Management, intended to support buildout of its 400 MW Polaris Forge 1 campus (with design to scale toward 1 GW over time). 7
$2.35B debt deal: expensive capital, but major funding
In November, the company announced its subsidiary priced $2.35 billion of 9.250% senior secured notes due 2030 (issued at 97% of principal). Proceeds were earmarked to fund construction and associated costs for 100 MW and 150 MW facilities at Polaris Forge 1 (ELN-02 and ELN-03), repay amounts under a credit agreement, and cover reserves and transaction expenses. 8
Investors generally interpret this two ways:
- Bull view: financing is in place to keep the build moving.
- Bear view: a 9.25% coupon is a loud signal that capital isn’t cheap, and leverage magnifies execution risk.
Both can be true at the same time. Markets love being complicated.
Earnings and fundamentals: rapid growth, losses still in the picture
On the fundamentals side, Reuters reported that Applied Digital beat first-quarter revenue estimates in October, citing demand for data center services tied to generative AI workloads. 9
MarketBeat’s earnings summary for the same period notes revenue of $64.22 million (up 84.3% year-over-year) and an EPS loss of $0.03, ahead of some expectations. 10
The takeaway for many analysts: revenue is scaling, but profitability depends on how quickly contracted capacity ramps and whether financing and operating costs behave.
Analyst forecasts and price targets: bullish targets… but not unanimous
Forecasts for APLD vary widely across tracking services—partly because the company’s business mix is changing, and partly because different analysts weigh execution and tenant risk differently.
- TipRanks shows a wide spread of analyst price targets, with an average target in the low-$40s and a cited high target reaching $56 (figures based on recent analyst targets on the platform). 11
- MarketBeat shows a consensus target around the mid-$20s, with an unusually wide range of targets (as low as single digits and as high as $41), reflecting how polarized views can be on capital-heavy growth stories. 12
- A MarketBeat roundup of research notes cites firms maintaining buy ratings and raising targets into the high-$30s to low-$40s in late October. 13
Meanwhile, broader-market commentary has leaned into the “AI infrastructure constraint” narrative—arguing that the bottleneck is increasingly data center power and cooling, not GPUs—positioning companies like Applied Digital as potential beneficiaries if they execute. 14
Short interest: gasoline on the volatility fire
One reason APLD can rip higher—or drop hard—on headlines is positioning.
MarketBeat data shows Applied Digital had short interest of roughly 80.34 million shares, about 31.87% of the public float as of late November, with days-to-cover around 3.0. 15
High short interest can mean:
- a large cohort is betting against valuation/execution, and/or
- the stock can become prone to violent squeezes when news surprises to the upside.
It’s not a morality play. It’s just market plumbing.
The most important risk debate: tenant credit and the cost of capital
Here’s the grown-up risk question hovering over the entire AI data center boom: who are the tenants, and how stable is the financing environment?
A Reuters Breakingviews analysis warned that parts of the data center buildout are being driven not only by cash-rich hyperscalers, but also by riskier “neo-cloud” tenants, and that shifts in interest rates, tenant credit quality, and valuation assumptions can materially change the economics for data center developers. The piece specifically cites Applied Digital’s long-term lease viability as sensitive to these assumptions. 16
Applied Digital’s own move to lock in an investment-grade hyperscaler tenant at Polaris Forge 2 reads like a direct response to that macro fear: contract quality matters when you’re funding multi-gigawatt dreams with real-world debt.
What to watch next for Applied Digital (APLD) stock
As of Dec. 15, 2025, the next major APLD catalysts investors are tracking tend to cluster into a few buckets:
1) Additional leasing announcements
Applied Digital’s CEO has publicly discussed pursuing more large customer deals beyond the current marquee leases. 17
2) The construction-to-revenue handoff
Zacks analysis has highlighted a staged ramp where lease economics scale as new capacity comes online through late 2025, 2026, and 2027. 18
3) The next earnings checkpoint
MarketBeat lists the next earnings window in mid-January 2026 (after market close), which could reset expectations around margin trajectory and buildout spending. 10
4) Financing terms and balance-sheet updates
After a 9.25% secured notes deal, investors will scrutinize whether future capital comes in cheaper—or more restrictive.
Bottom line: APLD is an AI infrastructure story with real momentum—and real fragility
Applied Digital’s 2025 surge is not just hype; it’s anchored in tangible developments: large, long-dated leases, visible capacity buildouts, and major financing moves that support aggressive expansion. 4
At the same time, the stock’s sharp pullbacks, heavy short interest, and the broader market’s renewed attention to tenant credit risk and funding costs are flashing a reminder: AI infrastructure may be essential, but the path to durable returns is paved with execution deadlines, capex discipline, and contract quality. 15
