Pranav Hotkar
Dallas, Texas - July 1, 2026 - Applied Digital has completed another major phase of its flagship Polaris Forge 1 AI campus, bringing an additional 75 MW of operational capacity online as the company continues expanding one of North America's largest purpose-built AI data center developments.
The company announced that Phase 1 of Building 2 at its Polaris Forge 1 campus in Ellendale, North Dakota, has achieved Ready for Service (RFS) status, delivering the new capacity to its hyperscale customer on schedule. The milestone increases the campus's operational AI capacity from 100 MW to 175 MW, representing another step toward the site's planned 400 MW of critical IT load.
Polaris Forge 1 is fully leased under long-term agreements and has been designed specifically to support high-density artificial intelligence and high-performance computing workloads. The campus forms a cornerstone of Applied Digital's broader AI infrastructure strategy, which focuses on rapidly converting secured power into operational data center capacity for hyperscale customers.
The latest delivery follows the successful completion of the campus's first 100 MW building in late 2025, demonstrating what the company describes as a repeatable deployment model for large-scale AI infrastructure. Rather than treating each project as a standalone development, Applied Digital has standardized engineering, construction, procurement, and operations across its campuses to accelerate deployment while maintaining consistent execution.
The project arrives amid unprecedented demand for AI-ready data centers. As hyperscale cloud providers race to deploy increasingly powerful AI models, operators are prioritizing partners capable of delivering energized capacity on predictable timelines. Industry demand has shifted beyond simply securing land and utility power, placing greater emphasis on execution speed and the ability to bring high-density facilities into production without delays.
Applied Digital has continued expanding its AI Factory platform alongside Polaris Forge 1. Earlier this year, the company secured financing to construct a fourth building at the campus, adding another 150 MW of planned capacity, while also announcing additional hyperscale developments under its Polaris Forge and Delta Forge portfolios. Collectively, these projects represent more than a gigawatt of contracted AI infrastructure across multiple campuses.
The Ellendale campus highlights North Dakota's growing role in the AI infrastructure market. Access to large-scale utility power, available land, and supportive energy infrastructure has positioned the state as an emerging destination for hyperscale AI deployments outside traditional data center markets.
With 175 MW now operational and additional phases under construction, Polaris Forge 1 continues to demonstrate the industry's shift toward purpose-built AI campuses, measured not only by megawatts under development but also by how quickly those megawatts can be transformed into live computing capacity. For Applied Digital, meeting customer deployment schedules remains central to its strategy as competition intensifies among builders of next-generation AI data centers.
