Les serrures numériques appliquées louent une usine d'IA de 210 MW à Delta Forge 2 pour 5,2 milliards de dollars

Applied Digital just locked a $5.2 billion, 15-year take-or-pay lease at its Delta Forge 2 AI campus with an unnamed US hyperscaler — the third such deal with the same client. Shares shot up 8.7% in extended trading. That’s one hell of a signal that hyperscalers are still hungry for dedicated AI compute capacity at scale.

$5.2B Base, $12.7B if Renewals Hit

The lease covers 210 megawatts of computing capacity at Delta Forge 2, Applied Digital’s new AI Factory campus. Base-term revenue: $5.2 billion over 15 years. If the hyperscaler exercises all renewal options, that number climbs to $12.7 billion over 30 years. Applied Digital’s total contracted base-term lease revenue now sits at roughly $36 billion — or $86 billion with all renewal options exercised. The company’s portfolio spans five campuses representing 1.4 gigawatts of critical IT load and 2.15 gigawatts of grid-connected utility power. That’s real infrastructure, not PowerPoint vapor.

Waterless Cooling and 2028 Delivery

Delta Forge 2 uses Applied Digital’s waterless cooling technology and high-power density infrastructure purpose-built for AI workloads. No water — good for drought-prone regions and faster permitting. Initial operations are scheduled for Q1 2028, giving the hyperscaler a nearly two-year lead time to line up GPUs, networking, and power delivery. Take-or-pay means Applied Digital gets paid whether the hyperscaler flips the switches or not, which de-risks the capital build-out.

The Hyperscaler’s Playbook

This is the third long-term lease Applied Digital has signed with the same investment-grade hyperscaler. Repeat business of this magnitude tells me the hyperscaler is confident in Applied Digital’s execution and the Delta Forge 2 site’s power availability. Roughly 70% of Applied Digital’s contracted revenue is now backed by US investment-grade hyperscalers. That concentration is a risk, but it also reflects how few operators can deliver 210 MW blocks with waterless cooling and a 2028 timeline.

If Applied Digital delivers Delta Forge 2 on schedule by Q1 2028, hyperscalers will have another 210 MW of hardened AI compute to drop into the hardware pipeline — and the industry gets a clear pricing signal for what 15-year dedicated capacity costs.

Source: Applied Digital signs $5.2 billion AI data center lease with US hyperscaler
Domain: economictimes.indiatimes.com