Applied Digital (APLD) Stock Slides on Dec. 23, 2025: Today’s News, Analyst Forecasts, and What Comes Next for the AI Data Center Play

Applied Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: APLD) stock pulled back on Tuesday, December 23, 2025, after a volatile stretch that’s become familiar to anyone watching the AI infrastructure trade. Shares were recently around $26.32, down about 5.26% on the session, after trading between $27.71 and $25.97 with roughly 14.6 million shares traded.

The move comes even as the day’s commentary cycle stayed broadly constructive: multiple fresh analyses focused on Applied Digital’s growing role as an “AI data center landlord,” its long-duration leasing model, and the question investors keep returning to—how much future growth is already priced in.

Below is a full, publication-ready breakdown of today’s (23.12.2025) news flow, forecasts, and analysis surrounding Applied Digital stock (APLD)—and the concrete catalysts that could matter next.

What happened to Applied Digital stock today (Dec. 23, 2025)?

APLD gapped lower at the open and remained under pressure through the session. MarketBeat noted the stock opened around $26.82 after a prior close near $27.78, highlighting the gap-down tone early in trading. ^[1]

That weakness aligns with the bigger picture: Applied Digital has been swinging hard in both directions this month, driven by funding headlines, AI data center lease milestones, and periodic bouts of “rate-and-credit” anxiety that tends to hit capital-intensive builders especially hard. Recent daily moves in mid-to-late December included sharp down days alongside powerful rebounds, underscoring how sentiment can flip quickly in this corner of the market. ^[2]

Key takeaway for Dec. 23: the decline looks less like a reaction to a single new corporate announcement and more like a digestion day after a high-catalyst stretch—where traders reassess valuation, financing risk, and execution pace.

Today’s news and analysis: why the market is debating APLD again

1) “Compute power is the new bottleneck” thesis (bullish framing)

One of the most-circulated Dec. 23 takes argued that the AI boom is migrating from “chips” to “power and purpose-built facilities,” positioning Applied Digital as a potential picks-and-shovels provider for the next phase of AI scaling. That view emphasizes:

Applied Digital’s data center capacity/pipeline measured in gigawatts
The operational importance of power access
The potential for large, long-term deals to dramatically reshape revenue visibility ^[3]

In that framing, a single hyperscale-style agreement can add multi-year contracted revenue quickly—one reason APLD remains tightly linked to “deal tape” and lease announcements rather than near-term profitability.

2) Applied Digital vs. CoreWeave: landlord vs. neocloud (comparative analysis)

Another Dec. 23 analysis compared Applied Digital with CoreWeave—one of its most important customers—highlighting how intertwined the two stories have become. It describes Applied Digital as effectively the builder/landlord providing specialized buildings, cooling design, and—crucially—power access that neocloud operators need to deploy GPU clusters. ^[4]

That same analysis references Applied Digital’s customer concentration dynamic: CoreWeave is a major driver of contracted demand, and investors are watching for Applied Digital to diversify future leasing beyond that relationship. ^[5]

3) The skeptical camp: leverage and “AI data center debt” risk

A more cautionary analysis published recently (and still circulating into Dec. 23) urged investors not to confuse financing progress with risk reduction. The skeptical view focuses on the basic physics of the business model:

Huge upfront capital needs
Dependence on debt/private credit/preferred equity
Sensitivity to interest rates and credit spreads
The danger of execution delays when financing costs are high ^[6]

This isn’t just abstract theorizing. Reuters Breakingviews, for example, has warned more broadly that tenant credit quality and financing conditions could become a limiting factor for the AI data center buildout—especially when developers rely on long-dated leases tied to less-than-hyperscaler balance sheets. ^[7]

The fundamentals behind the headlines: leases, power, and Polaris Forge

To understand Applied Digital stock, it helps to translate the story into three recurring investor questions:

1) How much capacity is actually contracted vs. just “in the pipeline”?

Applied Digital’s narrative strength is that it’s not simply promising future capacity—it has signed major long-duration leases and is delivering energized capacity.

The company has described a 400 MW fully contracted deployment at Polaris Forge 1 in North Dakota under long-term lease agreements with CoreWeave. ^[8]
Applied Digital announced in late November that it achieved Ready-for-Service milestones that brought Building 1 to 100 MW of energized critical IT load (with the campus buildout continuing). ^[9]
Reuters previously reported Applied Digital signed a $5 billion lease with a U.S.-based hyperscaler for 200 MW at its Polaris Forge 2 campus, describing a ~15-year agreement and noting the deal increased total leased capacity across Polaris Forge 1 and 2. ^[10]

2) Can Applied Digital keep funding and building without losing flexibility?

On December 18, Applied Digital announced it entered into a loan facility with Macquarie to fund pre-lease development costs for new data center projects, with the initial $100 million intended to support development work tied to campuses where the company said it is in advanced-stage negotiations with an investment-grade hyperscaler. ^[11]

In other words: the company is trying to keep a pipeline moving during the “pre-lease” phase without committing to the most expensive parts of construction too early—and without waiting for perfect market conditions.

This builds on a longer relationship with Macquarie. Reuters previously reported (January 2025) that Macquarie agreed to take a stake in Applied Digital’s HPC business and invest up to $5 billion in AI data centers, illustrating how central that partnership has become to the company’s capital strategy. ^[12]

3) Is the company actually executing on time?

Execution cadence matters in AI infrastructure because customers’ deployment schedules are tight, and delays can ripple into financing risk and credibility.

Applied Digital has repeatedly emphasized on-time delivery at Polaris Forge 1, including the November milestone that fully energized the first 100 MW building. ^[13]

Earnings and profitability reality check: growth is real, profits are not (yet)

Even the bullish takes acknowledge the mismatch between near-term financials and long-term contracted ambitions.

MarketBeat summarized recent results showing revenue of $64.22 million for the quarter referenced in its report, with EPS of -0.03 beating estimates, and revenue growth cited as sharply higher year-over-year—while also stressing that the company remains unprofitable with negative margins/returns. ^[14]

That “growth now, profitability later” profile is common for infrastructure buildouts—but it’s exactly why the stock can trade like a high-beta instrument. MarketBeat lists APLD’s beta as elevated (a marker of volatility), and liquidity ratios that investors often scrutinize in capital-intensive names. ^[15]

APLD stock forecast: what analysts and aggregators are projecting as of Dec. 23, 2025

Here’s where it gets interesting (and confusing): different analyst-forecast aggregators show very different “consensus” targets for Applied Digital stock—often because they use different time windows, include different analysts, or handle stale targets differently.

MarketBeat’s consensus: Moderate Buy, but a target near today’s price

MarketBeat shows:

Consensus rating: Moderate Buy
Consensus price target:$26.20 (roughly around today’s trading range), with a wide spread between the highest and lowest targets ^[16]

This dataset includes at least one notably low target, which can mathematically drag down the “average” even when most ratings are positive. ^[17]

TipRanks: Strong Buy, targets clustered far higher

TipRanks, using a recent-coverage window, shows:

Strong Buy consensus based on the analysts it includes
Average price target:$42.78
High forecast:$56 / Low forecast:$35 ^[18]

Investing.com snapshot: similar “low-to-mid 40s” target picture

Investing.com lists an average price target around the low-to-mid $40s range with a stated high estimate of $56, and it also flags the next earnings date (Jan. 7, 2026). ^[19]

Named targets cited in today’s coverage

A Dec. 23 data roundup cited targets from several firms (examples include Needham, Craig-Hallum, Northland, Lake Street, HC Wainwright, JMP, Roth), mostly clustered in the mid-$30s to low-$40s. ^[20]

How to read the discrepancy: The market isn’t “wrong” about targets; it’s that targets are not a single truth. For APLD, the spread reflects uncertainty about (1) how quickly capacity converts into revenue, and (2) the cost of capital needed to build the next campuses.

Technical analysis on Dec. 23: indicators flash “Strong Sell,” but oversold signals are building

For readers who track technicals, Investing.com’s indicator dashboard on Dec. 23 showed:

Summary reading: Strong Sell
RSI around the mid-range (not extreme), but several oscillators flagged oversold conditions ^[21]

This fits the “whiplash” personality of APLD: sharp rallies, sharp pullbacks, and technical signals that can flip quickly when news hits.

The bull case for Applied Digital stock: why optimists stay in the story

Even after today’s drop, the optimistic thesis remains structurally consistent:

AI demand is pulling infrastructure forward. The bottleneck is increasingly about power and specialized facilities, not just GPUs. ^[22]
Contracted revenue visibility is improving. Major long-duration leases—especially with CoreWeave and the hyperscaler lease reported by Reuters—give the business a clearer runway than many early-stage infrastructure plays. ^[23]
Execution milestones reduce “PowerPoint risk.” Energizing and delivering capacity (like the Polaris Forge 1 milestones) matters because it de-risks the timeline narrative. ^[24]
Financing pathways exist. The Macquarie development facility is designed specifically to fund early-stage development work, keeping the pipeline moving into future leases. ^[25]

The bear case: what can still go wrong (and why the stock is so reactive)

The cautious view has teeth—and it explains days like today.

1) Capital intensity + financing sensitivity

AI data centers are expensive, and the financing mix matters. Breakingviews has highlighted how changes in borrowing costs, cap rates, and tenant credit perceptions can swing project economics—especially when developers use meaningful leverage. ^[26]

2) Tenant and customer concentration risk

Applied Digital’s relationship with CoreWeave is central to the near-term story. That can be good (scale, credibility) but also concentrates risk if a major tenant slows deployments or if the broader neocloud ecosystem tightens. ^[27]

3) Profitability is still a “later” problem—until markets decide it’s a “now” problem

With ongoing losses and heavy buildout spending, the market tends to punish any hint that timelines slip or financing becomes more expensive. MarketBeat also notes insider sales activity in recent months, which some investors watch closely in momentum names. ^[28]

What to watch next: the specific catalysts that could move APLD stock

1) Jan. 7, 2026 earnings and guidance

Applied Digital has scheduled its fiscal Q2 2026 earnings conference call for January 7, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. ET, with results expected after the market closes that day. ^[29]

Given how APLD trades, investors will likely focus less on the quarter’s “beat/miss” and more on:

Leasing progress (especially any hyperscaler updates)
Buildout timelines and energized capacity milestones
Funding strategy and cost of capital

2) Progress toward additional hyperscaler deals

The December 18 financing announcement explicitly tied initial funding to development work while the company said it is in advanced-stage negotiations with another investment-grade hyperscaler. Any concrete contract announcement here could be a major catalyst. ^[30]

3) Polaris Forge delivery cadence

Investors will keep tracking whether Applied Digital continues to bring capacity online on schedule, following the Polaris Forge 1 energized milestone and the broader contracted buildout described by the company. ^[31]

Bottom line on Dec. 23, 2025

Applied Digital stock dropped today, but the broader narrative hasn’t “broken”—it’s simply back in its natural habitat: a high-volatility tug-of-war between massive AI infrastructure demand and the very real financing/execution risks of building it.

Bulls see a power-and-data-center landlord with meaningful contracted revenue and a credible expansion partner ecosystem. ^[32]
Bears see a capital-intensive builder where credit conditions and tenant risk can turn quickly, especially if timelines slip. ^[33]
Analyst forecasts remain mostly positive on ratings, but price targets vary widely based on methodology and recency—one of the clearest signals that uncertainty is still part of the APLD package. ^[34]

References