Applied Digital Investor Day: Revitalizing Communities through Data Center Development

Richard Nottenburg, a Board of Directors member at Applied Digital, describes the company’s impactful initiative of constructing data centers in less populous areas such as North Dakota. This strategy is not only advancing technological infrastructure but also revitalizing small towns by creating jobs and attracting people back to these communities, thereby contributing to their economic and social renaissance.

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As AI infrastructure spreads beyond tech hubs and into America’s heartland, companies face a new imperative: not just to build facilities—but to build trust, local partnerships, and long-term value for the communities that host them. In Ellendale, North Dakota, Applied Digital’s Polaris Forge 1 campus has become a case study in what rural revitalization…

As demand for artificial intelligence continues to soar, the AI infrastructure needed to power it is scaling just as rapidly. A 2024 report from the International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that global spending on AI infrastructure will exceed $200 billion by 2028, driven by an explosion in compute-heavy applications like large language models and…

AI workloads are redefining the limits of data center design and infrastructure. Legacy data centers, built for traditional co-location, cannot handle the density, thermal demands, or power dynamics of accelerated computing. The AI boom has upended the data center sector, forcing a rapid shift to liquid-cooled racks as facilities pivot from sub-10kW racks to…