What Happened?
Shares of digital infrastructure provider Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) jumped 2.8% in the morning session after the company announced it had broken ground on a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center campus.
This move came after the firm revealed plans for Delta Forge 1, a new 430MW AI factory campus in a southern U.S. state. The facility was scheduled to start operations in mid-2027. The development appeared to reflect strong demand for the company's purpose-built AI infrastructure. The expansion built on Applied Digital's history of securing long-term business, with previous lease agreements for other data centers projected to generate significant revenue over many years. In response to the news, some capital market firms reiterated their positive ratings on the stock.
After the initial pop the shares cooled down to $38.11, up 1% from previous close.
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What Is The Market Telling Us
Applied Digital’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 91 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 10 days ago when the stock gained 4.8% on the news that investor optimism grew on the back of its strong growth pipeline, a substantial order backlog, and increasing demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
The company's stock climbed as analysts took note of its visible growth and robust customer interest. Fueling the positive sentiment was Applied Digital's reported order backlog of roughly $16 billion. This included two lease agreements with AI cloud company CoreWeave, expected to generate a combined $11 billion, and a 15-year, $5 billion agreement with another U.S. high-performance computing provider. This strong demand was reflected in the company's fiscal second-quarter results, where revenue surged 250% year over year to $126.6 million. The broader market environment also provided a lift, as technology and chipmaker stocks rallied amid growing investor confidence in AI as a long-term growth driver.
Applied Digital is up 35.5% since the beginning of the year, and at $38.11 per share, it is trading close to its 52-week high of $38.21 from January 2026. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Applied Digital’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $94,759.
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