Applied Digital raised just $40 million when it listed on Nasdaq in April 2022, selling shares at $5. It was then called Applied Blockchain, and it hosted bitcoin mining machines in North Dakota, where power was cheap and the cold air kept computers cool. The public company behind it had gone by several names since 2001. The crypto market was about to crash. Within three years the same playbook was building data centers for AI.

Cheap Power, Cold Air

The company took the name Applied Blockchain in 2021, became Applied Digital in 2023, and is run from Dallas by CEO Wes Cummins. The bet was that computing would move to wherever power was cheapest and land was open. Its first sites hosted crypto miners for a fee. It then designed denser buildings for the graphics chips that train and run AI models, at a campus it calls Polaris Forge in Ellendale, North Dakota.

Five Dollars and 400 Megawatts

Applied Digital priced its uplisting offering at $5 a share in April 2022 and sold 8 million shares on Nasdaq as APLD. Before that, its stock had traded over the counter. In 2025 it signed leases with CoreWeave for 400 megawatts of capacity at Polaris Forge 1. The first 100-megawatt building there came online in October 2025. Applied Digital still trades on Nasdaq.

Cover: Snow Field, Morning, Roxbury, John La Farge. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a snowy northern field (cold-climate data centers).