APLD Stock Rallies After Hours On Massive New $7.5 Billion Hyperscaler Lease: Retail Think Firm Should Be Worth More Than Rival IREN

• The milestone underscores the company’s rapid pivot from its blockchain origins into the booming AI infrastructure market.
• The new agreement covers the fourth AI Factory campus, Polaris Forge 3. 
• The transaction lifts Applied Digital’s total contracted lease revenue across four AI Factory campuses to $31 billion, or $73 billion including all renewal options.

Shares of Applied Digital Corp. (APLD) climbed more than 7% in after-hours trading on Wednesday following the company’s announcement that it has surpassed 1 gigawatt of contracted capacity for its AI-focused data centers.

The Dallas-based designer, builder and operator of next-generation high-performance data centers said it signed a 15-year take-or-pay lease with the same U.S.-based high investment-grade hyperscaler that previously committed to its Delta Forge 1 campus in April. The new agreement covers the fourth AI Factory campus, Polaris Forge 3, delivering 300 MW of critical IT load supported by approximately 430 MW of grid-connected utility power. The deal is valued at roughly $7.5 billion in base-term contracted revenue and up to $18.2 billion if all renewal options are exercised, the company said.

The transaction lifts Applied Digital’s total contracted lease revenue across four AI Factory campuses to $31 billion, or $73 billion including all renewal options, with roughly 65% backed by investment-grade hyperscalers. Total contracted capacity now stands at 1,200 MW of critical IT load and about 1,670 MW of utility power. Initial operations at Polaris Forge 3, which spans more than 600 acres and uses the company’s proprietary waterless cooling technology, are scheduled to begin in August 2027.

The milestone underscores the company’s rapid pivot from its blockchain origins into the booming AI infrastructure market, where hyperscalers are scrambling for large-scale, reliable capacity to support training and inference workloads.

In early May, APLD completed the separation of its cloud business into an independent public company, ChronoScale, and closed a $300 million senior secured bridge facility to fund ongoing AI data center development.

How Did APLD Retail Traders React?

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around APLD stock jumped from ‘bearish’ to ‘bullish territory over the past 24 hours, while message volume increased from low to normal levels.

A Stocktwits user opined that APLD should be worth more than its rival IREN, provided that they have “proved more.” Both are former Bitcoin-mining companies that have pivoted aggressively into AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data-center infrastructure. However, while IREN has a market cap of $18.84 billion, APLD has only $11.29 billion.

Another user expressed optimism for a major rally on Thursday.

APLD stock has gained 487% over the past 12 months. 

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