Applied Digital breaks ground on Delta Forge 1 campus

Applied Digital broke ground on Delta Forge 1, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Factory campus in a southern U.S. market intended to provide capacity for high-density AI workloads and to convert available utility power into operational compute resources.

The company said the project formed part of its growth plans and expected the campus to support more than 200 full-time employees plus long-term contractors, creating durable economic opportunity and long-term investment in the region while it advanced talks with a prospective investment-grade hyperscale customer.

Delta Forge 1 was designed to support an initial 430 megawatts of total utility power, enabling up to 300 megawatts of critical IT load across two 150-MW facilities on more than 500 acres, and the campus included engineering for power integration, advanced cooling and operational processes required to run large-scale AI workloads.

The campus was planned to begin with two facilities totaling 300 Megawatt (MW) of critical IT capacity and to scale over time through Applied Digital’s repeatable approach to hyperscale infrastructure deployment and use of a proprietary AI Factory blueprint refined at its Polaris Forge campuses in North Dakota.

“Delta Forge 1 represents the next stage of Applied Digital’s growth, as we continue to deliver AI infrastructure through disciplined execution,” said Wes Cummins, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Applied Digital. “AI Factories succeed or fail based on how effectively power, cooling and operations are integrated. We believe this campus will be built to scale alongside hyperscale demand while delivering operational certainty for customers and lasting value for the communities where we operate.”

Initial operations at Delta Forge 1 were expected to commence in mid-2027, and the company planned to scale capacity in 2028 and beyond.