Applied Digital Strengthens Community Relations through Innovative Data Center Practices

My name is Nick Phillips. I'm the executive vice president of operations and public affairs here at Applied Digital. Applied Digital is building first of its kind, best in class, very dense data centers. In many cases, very rural locations across the United States. We're doing things that nobody else has ever done before. The great thing about Applied Digital is we've really tried to plug into each of the communities that we work in and work with the community to make sure that we have the things that we and the community both need. So for example, in one of our rural locations right now, we're working heavily on housing and how to get more houses built so that we can bring more workers into the area, which will help restart the community's economy. When we enter a brand new community, we like to get really involved. We come in, we like to work with city council members, county commissioners, neighbors in the community. We try to make sure that as we build things and we understand what's going on inside of the community, we make sure that we're compatible with it. Every time we go into a new community, we start out with a town hall meeting where we show up, we do a little presentation and explain what it is that we're going to do as a business. Most of the time, there's really kind of a disbelief that we're gonna build something so large and so big and employ the number of people that we're going to employ in a community. One of the things that I like to say when I'm talking to people for the first time is we turn corn fields into data centers, and we take farmers and help them become data center operators. And we do that through a very robust internal training program. So we've made it very simple for folks to come in, join our company at the very entry level positions. If they're willing to put in hard work and learn, they can start with very little, maybe even no background experience at all on the technology side, and they can really do well inside of our framework that we've built. There's a few really interesting values that Applied Digital brings to communities. Number one, as farming technology has changed, a lot of the rural communities into which we're moving need less and less workers, so there's less and less job opportunities for younger folks. Applied digital is coming in and bringing high paying jobs. We have an opportunity for people to grow and learn and and work with us, and it's been able to attract folks to move back to these rural communities that they had previously left, which is great for families. It's great for the community to bring people back. So we locate next to lots of wind farms or solar fields. So by putting our facilities next to these power generation facilities, it allows them to operate with a better return on their investment, and they can operate more often. The other reason why we choose to operate in rural locations is because the speed at which we can do things is greater. We get to work with the people who are the decision makers in the community and make sure that what we're building is compatible with what they see for their future. It's really important for companies like Applied Digital to come into communities and try to integrate into those communities. Ultimately, for us, it's all about people. The people who work for us, the people that we're next to, our neighbors, our communities that we're in, it's just vitally important to us to make sure that we're compatible and that we work well together.