New York, January 23, 2026, 6:43 PM ET — After-hours
- Applied Digital shares jumped roughly 8.5% following the company’s announcement that it has begun construction on a 430-megawatt AI data-center campus.
- Delta Forge 1 targets hyperscale clients and is scheduled to start initial operations by mid-2027, the company announced.
- CEO Wes Cummins told The Register the site location should be revealed in February; meanwhile, a director filed a Form 4 disclosing a gift of 6,000 shares.
Applied Digital Corp’s shares jumped roughly 8.5% Friday to close at $37.69. The Nasdaq-listed data-center developer announced it had started construction on Delta Forge 1, a 430-megawatt “AI Factory” campus in a southern U.S. market. During the session, the stock fluctuated between $33.24 and $38.98, with about 48 million shares changing hands.
This shift is significant since investors have seen power as the main bottleneck in AI expansion. Developers with verified access to grid power and land — and confirmed tenants — are now seeing rapid and steep repricings.
Applied Digital is a smaller player in the race, often moving on capacity announcements. Still, the market doesn’t cut much slack: it’s one thing to announce megawatt targets, another to actually hit them.
The company dubs Delta Forge 1 an “AI Factory,” a term it applies to data centers built to handle dense AI chip clusters. Simply put, it’s about turning utility power into operational server capacity without running into issues with cooling, permits, or construction.
Applied Digital announced that Delta Forge 1 will initially support 430 MW of total utility power across two buildings, with up to 300 MW allocated for “critical IT load”—the actual power feeding servers after accounting for overhead like cooling. The project could expand beyond this starting point from 2028 onward. Chairman and CEO Wes Cummins emphasized the campus’s design to “scale alongside hyperscale demand” while providing “operational certainty” for clients. 1
The initial phase will feature two 150-MW plants covering over 500 acres, the company announced, with operations set to begin by mid-2027. Applied Digital added the campus could employ more than 200 full-time workers once it’s fully up and running.
Applied Digital said it is moving forward with the project as it holds talks with another potential “investment-grade hyperscale” client. Hyperscalers refer to the biggest cloud and internet companies, which typically lock in long-term leases for data-center space, often purchasing capacity in blocks numbering in the hundreds of megawatts.
Cummins told The Register the company is holding off on revealing the site name for now — “We’re not trying to hide anything,” he said — with Applied Digital planning to announce the location in February. The publication noted the company has met local resistance linked to past projects, highlighting how community opposition can delay large-scale power developments despite strong customer demand. 2
A separate regulatory filing on Friday revealed director Douglas S. Miller gifted 6,000 shares on Jan. 22. Following the transaction, he still held roughly 194,859 shares. 3
Delta Forge 1, however, still faces a lengthy path ahead. The tenant remains unnamed, the grid connections pose significant challenges, and Applied Digital must maintain steady financing and construction progress before investors start pricing in the project’s potential.
Traders are focused on two key upcoming events: the promised site disclosure in February and any news that moves “discussions” into a signed lease. Until those happen, the stock will probably track closely each move that either closes or widens the gap between plans and actual power-on capacity.
