Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) has signed a $5.2 billion, 15-year lease for 210 megawatts of critical IT capacity at its Delta Forge 2 AI Factory campus in a southern U.S. state.
The agreement was reached with a U.S.-based high investment-grade hyperscaler, marking the third major deal between the two parties following two prior long-term contracts.
The latest agreement pushes Applied Digital’s total contracted portfolio to approximately $36 billion spread across five AI Factory campuses.
Delta Forge 2 represents the company’s fifth AI campus, further validating its franchise-style approach to scaling large-scale AI infrastructure.
The 15-year lease structure includes renewal options that could extend the agreement to 30 years, with total revenue potential rising to approximately $12.7 billion if all extensions are exercised.
Initial operations at Delta Forge 2 are expected to begin in the first quarter of 2028, reflecting a multi-year construction and commissioning timeline.
The campus is engineered specifically for high-density GPU workloads used in AI training and inference at scale, rather than conventional cloud hosting applications.
A standout feature of the facility is its proprietary waterless cooling technology, which reduces dependency on water resources while supporting high power density configurations.
CEO Wes Cummins has described Applied Digital’s approach as a “franchise model,” where design, construction, and operations are standardized and replicated across multiple campuses.
The company now reports approximately 1.4 gigawatts of contracted critical IT load across its five AI factory campuses, underscoring the rapid expansion of its infrastructure platform.
Site selection for Delta Forge 2 also reflects a deliberate strategy of aligning large-scale infrastructure investment with local economic development, targeting communities where the company’s presence can generate measurable job creation and tax revenue.
Applied Digital documents parts of its development process through its “Behind the Build” series, offering public visibility into construction progress and community engagement as each campus is brought online.
The scale and pace of deal-making positions Applied Digital as one of the more aggressive players in the race to build purpose-built AI compute infrastructure across the United States.
