Applied Digital Soars 16% as AI Infrastructure Boom Supercharges Growth

Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) extended its blistering 2025 rally on Friday, with shares jumping 16% after the company reported first-quarter results that blew past expectations—driven by accelerating demand for AI-focused data centers.

The stock is now up more than 340% year to date, underscoring investor enthusiasm for the companies powering the AI buildout.

AI Power Demand Sparks Explosive Growth

The Dallas-based data center operator reported $64.2 million in revenue, an 84% jump from the same quarter last year and well above the $50 million analysts expected. Losses narrowed to $0.07 per share, compared with Wall Street estimates of a $0.13 loss.

The surge reflects rapid growth in AI infrastructure spending, as major cloud and GPU players race to expand computing capacity. Applied Digital is positioning itself as a critical “picks and shovels” supplier to the AI gold rush—leasing massive energy-hungry data facilities to companies like CoreWeave, which recently signed a multibillion-dollar agreement with the firm.

Expanding CoreWeave Deal and North Dakota Footprint

During the quarter, Applied Digital deepened its $7 billion lease agreement with CoreWeave, adding another 150 megawatts (MW) of capacity at its Polaris Forge 1 campus in North Dakota. That expansion pushes the total anticipated lease revenue from the project to $11 billion.

CEO Wes Cummins said the company is “in a prime position to serve as the modern-day picks and shovels of the intelligence era,” pointing to estimates that hyperscalers will pour $350 billion into AI infrastructure this year alone.

Construction is nearly complete on one of Polaris Forge’s data buildings, with another soon to break ground. A separate North Dakota site, Polaris Forge 2, is also in motion—funded by Macquarie Equipment Capital and projected to cost $3 billion. Once finished, the two campuses will deliver 600 MW of total leased capacity, with the first 200 MW slated to go live in 2026 and full capacity expected in 2027.

The Big Picture

Applied Digital’s aggressive buildout comes amid an industrywide scramble to secure power and rack space for AI model training and inference. As data centers become the backbone of the AI economy, firms like Applied Digital are emerging as essential infrastructure providers—offering investors leveraged exposure to AI growth without direct exposure to model risk.

Analysts surveyed by LSEG expect the company’s momentum to continue into next quarter, forecasting $76 million in revenue and a $0.15 per-share loss, as Applied Digital scales to meet surging AI demand.

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