Latest news with #WesCummins
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
With Cloud Revenues Sliding, Can Hosting Sustain APLD's Growth?
Applied Digital APLD delivered 22% year-over-year revenue growth in the third quarter of fiscal 2025, reaching $52.9 million. However, underlying this top-line expansion is a shifting business model under pressure. The company's Cloud Services segment revenues declined sequentially to $17.8 million, primarily due to a transition to on-demand capacity and technical issues with a multi-tenant configuration, now resolved. In contrast, the Data Center Hosting segment generated $35.2 million, benefiting from full utilization at two North Dakota facilities and supportive Bitcoin pricing. Yet, the real story lies in APLD's pivot to high-performance computing (HPC) hosting, where it's betting big on AI-focused infrastructure. Construction of the Ellendale campus — a 400MW flagship data center — is progressing on schedule, with the first 100MW liquid-cooled facility set to go live in fourth-quarter 2025. Backed by $5 billion from Macquarie and $375 million from SMBC, the company is well-capitalized to execute this pivot. CEO Wes Cummins emphasized strong inbound leasing interest, stating discussions with multiple hyperscalers and expectations that a single anchor customer could occupy the entire initial build. However, APLD's long-term thesis relies on execution. CapEx remains aggressive at $30-$50 million per month, and the company carries $689 million in debt. Its plan to divest the Cloud Services business, partly due to friction with leasing prospects and REIT transition goals, introduces uncertainty around monetization and competitive positioning. While management believes the Cloud segment could rebound to $110-$120 million in annual revenues, its future under APLD is uncertain. Hosting, particularly in AI-focused HPC infrastructure, has become the cornerstone of APLD's growth strategy. With the Cloud segment in flux, successful lease-up of the Ellendale campus and timely execution on hyperscale contracts will be critical to validating this pivot and sustaining growth in a capital-intensive landscape. Digital Realty DLR is aggressively scaling its AI infrastructure footprint, supported by a newly formed $10 billion U.S. Hyperscale Data Center Fund, targeting top-tier metros like Northern Virginia, Dallas and Silicon Valley. In the first quarter, Digital Realty signed a record backlog of $919 million in booked-not-billed leases and expanded its development pipeline by 170MW to a total of 814MW — 63% of which is pre-leased. AI-driven demand contributed to record pricing of $244kW/month. Notably, a leading AI inference firm joined PlatformDIGITAL, leveraging its high-density and liquid-cooled infrastructure, including the new FRA18 center in Frankfurt. Digital Realty's strategy emphasizes scale, sustainability and contiguous capacity for AI use cases. Equinix EQIX is capitalizing on strong AI-driven demand, with notable AI wins in the first quarter, including deployments for Block's NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD and Grok's inference platform. The company's high-performance infrastructure and interconnection ecosystem make it an ideal platform for scalable AI workloads. EQIX is actively building larger IBX facilities, and 56 major projects are underway across 33 metros, including 12 xScale sites. 85% of xScale projects are pre-leased. Its 'Build Bolder' strategy emphasizes fewer, higher-density builds with fast cabinet rollout, while global AI momentum is supporting recurring revenue step-ups and margin expansion. Equinix expects AI-related growth to accelerate throughout 2025. APLD's Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates Shares of APLD have gained 24.6% in the year-to-date period compared with the industry's growth of 4.5%. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research From a valuation standpoint, Applied Digital trades at a forward price-to-sales of 7.97X, above the industry average as well as its five-year median of 1.47. APLD carries a Value Score of F. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Applied Digital's fiscal 2026 earnings implies a 67.7% rise year over year. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Equinix, Inc. (EQIX) : Free Stock Analysis Report Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (DLR) : Free Stock Analysis Report Applied Digital Corporation (APLD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research ( Zacks Investment Research Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
$2.7 Billion in Data Center Savings: New Applied Digital Report Positions North Dakota as the Epicenter for AI Infrastructure
Polaris Forge 'AI Factory' model outlines how smart site selection and cooling design can cut costs by up to $60M per year per campus DALLAS, June 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Applied Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: APLD) ('Applied Digital' or the 'Company'), a designer, builder, and operator of next-generation digital infrastructure designed for High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications, announces the release of a new white paper, AI Factory: A Case Study for Total Cost of Ownership. The paper details how site selection and data center design decisions can dramatically reduce the long-term costs of generative AI infrastructure. 'AI factories represent a fundamentally new category of digital infrastructure,' said Wes Cummins, Chairman and CEO of Applied Digital. 'Their success hinges on making the right decisions up front, especially around power and cooling. This white paper helps lay out what those decisions look like and why regions like North Dakota can outperform conventional markets on both cost and sustainability.' Applied Digital also introduced Polaris Forge as the name for its North Dakota-based data center region. With four campuses in various stages of development, Polaris Forge is built for scale, optimized for AI workloads, driven by renewable power and supported by infrastructure that prioritizes total cost of ownership. Key findings from the white paper include: AI factories require 15-30 times the power density of traditional data centers, driving the need for new power and cooling strategies. Site selection directly impacts cost; choosing areas with stranded power and cooler climates can reduce annual electricity costs by $50 to $60 million per year compared to other existing 100MW data centers, or up to $2.7 billion over a 30-year lifespan. Liquid cooling and free cooling are essential to long-term efficiency, enabling significantly lower Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE). North Dakota offers more than 220 days of free cooling annually, which contributes to lower operational costs and improved sustainability. Polaris Forge 01's design, featuring a closed-loop, waterless, direct-to-chip cooling system and access to gigawatt-scale stranded power demonstrates how infrastructure purpose-built for AI can achieve a projected PUE of 1.18 and a WUE near zero. The company's existing Ellendale campus—now designated Polaris Forge 01—demonstrates how a purpose-built AI factory can outperform traditional markets. Applied Digital designed Polaris Forge 1 with speed and efficiency in mind, selecting a location that offers access to abundant stranded power, a favorable climate for free cooling, and a strong foundation for long-term capacity expansion. Built to support 400 MW of critical IT load, with over 1 gigawatt in load study, Polaris Forge 01 positions both the region and Applied Digital as leaders in AI infrastructure. In addition to its infrastructure development, Applied Digital continues to play a key role in supporting local economies and workforces through its Community and Economic Development Initiatives. The company's approach to integrating community priorities, such as workforce housing and job creation, into its data center expansion strategy has helped it scale responsibly while maintaining strong local support. 'With Polaris Forge, we're building something that's efficient, scalable and community-focused,' added Cummins. 'We believe AI infrastructure can thrive in places like North Dakota—not in spite of their location, but because of it.' Applied Digital recently signed a 250MW 15-year lease agreement, worth $7 billion over its term, with CoreWeave for deployment at Polaris Forge 01, demonstrating strong market confidence in the company's ability to deliver large-scale, AI-optimized infrastructure with speed and reliability in emerging high-performance computing regions. To learn more about how site selection and design can impact long-term AI infrastructure costs, and why Applied Digital is betting big on regions like North Dakota, download the full white paper. About Applied Digital Applied Digital (Nasdaq: APLD) develops, builds and operates next-generation data centers and cloud infrastructure. Different by design, the company's purpose-built facilities are engineered to unleash the power of accelerated compute and deliver secure, scalable and sustainable digital hosting, along with turnkey CSaaS and GPU-as-a-Service solutions. Backed by deep hyperscale expertise and a robust pipeline of available power, Applied Digital accommodates AI Factories and beyond to support the world's most exacting AI/ML, blockchain and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. CAUTION ABOUT FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release contains 'forward-looking statements' as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding, among other things, future operating and financial performance, product development, market position, business strategy and objectives and future financing plans. These statements use words, and variations of words, such as 'will,' 'continue,' 'build,' 'future,' 'increase,' 'drive,' 'believe,' 'look,' 'ahead,' 'confident,' 'deliver,' 'outlook,' 'expect,' 'project' and 'predict.' Other examples of forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, (i) statements that reflect perspectives and expectations regarding the data center campus development, (ii) statements about the high-performance computing (HPC) industry, (iii) statements of plans and objectives, including an evolving business model, or estimates or predictions of actions by suppliers, (iv) statements of future economic performance, and (v) statements of assumptions underlying other statements and statements about the Company or its business. You are cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations of future events and thus are inherently subject to uncertainty. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or known or unknown risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results could vary materially from our expectations and projections. These risks, uncertainties, and other factors include: our ability to complete construction of the Ellendale HPC data centers; changes to AI and HPC infrastructure needs and their impact on future plans; risks associated with the leasing business, including those associated with counterparties; costs related to the HPC operations and strategy; our ability to raise additional capital to fund ongoing and future data center construction and operations; our ability to obtain financing of the lease agreements on acceptable financing terms, or at all; the inability to comply with regulations, developments and changes in regulations; cash flow and access to capital; availability of financing to continue to grow our business; decline in demand for our products and services; maintenance of third party relationships; and conditions in the debt and equity capital markets. A further list and description of these risks, uncertainties and other factors can be found in the Company's most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, including in the sections captioned 'Forward-Looking Statements' and 'Risk Factors,' and in the Company's subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Copies of these filings are available online at on the Company's website ( under 'Investors,' or on request from the Company. Information in this release is as of the dates and time periods indicated herein, and the Company does not undertake to update any of the information contained in these materials, except as required by law. CONTACT: Media Contact: Jaymie Scotto & Associates jsa_applied@ in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
CoreWeave Stock Soars on $7B Data Center Deal With Applied Digital
CoreWeave's (CRWV) stock surged 25% on Tuesday and climbing another 5% pre-market, bringing its year-to-date gains to a staggering 276%, following news of a $7 billion infrastructure deal with Applied Digital. The AI cloud-computing startup signed two 15-year lease agreements with Applied Digital for 250MW of IT load at the Ellendale, North Dakota data center campus. The first 100MW will go live in Q4 2025, followed by a 150MW facility in mid-2026. CoreWeave also holds options for up to 300MW of additional capacity. Applied Digital's Ellendale campus is designed to host 400MW of critical IT load and over 1GW of power capacity is under review. CEO Wes Cummins hailed the agreement as a major step in cementing Applied Digital's role in the AI and HPC infrastructure space. The company recently secured $375 million in financing from SMBC to accelerate development. Investor optimism around AI demand continues to fuel CoreWeave's meteoric rise. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Applied Digital Taps $7 Billion in CoreWeave Leases
Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD) surged 42% after striking two 15-year lease agreements with CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) worth approximately $7 billion in total revenue. Under the deal, Applied will deliver 250 MW of IT power to CoreWeave's Ellendale, North Dakota, AI and HPC data center, with an option to add another 150 MW. The first 100 MW facility is slated for late 2025, the next 150 MW by mid-2026, and a third 150 MW building could launch in 2027part of Ellendale's planned 1 GW capacity. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 8 Warning Signs with APLD. As Applied transitions toward a data-center-focused REIT, CEO Wes Cummins says these long-term leases cement its role as a foundational infrastructure provider for Neocloud innovators like CoreWeave, which rents Nvidia (NVDA)-powered GPU clusters. CoreWeave's stock also climbed nearly 5% on the news. Investors should care because the 15-year, multi-gigawatt lease stream provides Applied Digital with predictable, high-visibility cash flows and validates its pivot to large-scale AI data centers just as demand for GPU-backed cloud services soars. With Ellendale's first building breaking ground next year, markets will watch Applied Digital's progress on that 100 MW deployment and any additional 150 MW commitments that could push Ellendale toward its 1 GW target. This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
CNBC
03-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Applied Digital CEO weighs in on $7B data center deal with CoreWeave
Wes Cummins, Applied Digital CEO, joins 'Squawk on the Street' to discuss the company's deal with CoreWeave, demand outside of CoreWeave and much more.
