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Applied Digital Corp.
Wes Cummins runs Applied Digital Corp., a publicly traded builder of data centers purpose-fitted for AI workloads in North Dakota and Texas.
Applied Digital Corp.
Applied Digital Corp. was founded in 2001 as Applied Web Services, a provider of internet service and colocation in the upper Midwest. Wes Cummins, who ran the 272 Capital hedge fund and helped engineer the company's transformation, stepped in as CEO, shifting the entire asset base toward next-generation hosting for artificial intelligence clients. The firm exited its legacy data center operations in early 2023 to focus exclusively on accelerating the build-out of two large-scale campuses in North Dakota and Texas. The company deploys capital into three interlocking segments: building out data centers for high-performance computing under the Ellendale and Garden City brands, designing and operating on-site power generation through its Sai Computing initiative to escape utility interconnection queues, and hosting specialized GPU clusters for third-party AI inference and training workloads. The new posture functions more like a vertically integrated utility than a real estate play. Ellendale, North Dakota houses the bulk of the company's current 100 MW operational capacity, backed by on-site natural gas generation. The Garden City, Texas campus broke ground in 2023 with an eventual 400 MW target and a customer anchor that Cummins, in a May 2024 call, described only as 'an internationally known multi-billion dollar technology conglomerate.' The company employed roughly 150 people at year-end 2024, most of them site-construction engineers and power-operations staff. The corporate headquarters sits in Dallas, alongside the asset's third-party microgrid design partners. Applied Digital's corporate form — a publicly traded Nasdaq company (APLD) rather than a closed-end fund or private equity pool — separates it structurally from peers like CyrusOne or Stack. Shareholders own the balance sheet directly, with access to the same at-the-market equity programs Cummins has tapped to fund both land-and-shell capex and the powertrain layer that a typical digital-infrastructure REIT would outsource to the local utility.
General information
Firm type
Asset Manager
Year founded
2001
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Dallas
Corporate office
Dallas, TX, United States
Additional offices
Jamestown, ND, United States
Principals
Wes Cummins
CEO and Chairman
David Rench
CFO
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment decisions at Applied Digital Corp.?
CEO and Chairman Wes Cummins is the central decision-maker for capital allocation, site selection, and power strategy. Cummins, a former portfolio manager at B. Riley and the founder of hedge fund 272 Capital, drove the firm's pivot from a small public company into an AI-infrastructure vehicle. The board includes other Dallas-based financiers from the energy and telecom sectors.
Is Applied Digital Corp. a family office, or does it operate more like a venture firm?
It is neither — Applied Digital is a publicly traded operating company listed on Nasdaq under the ticker APLD. The firm generates revenue from building and operating digital infrastructure, not from charging management fees to LP capital pools. Unlike pure-play family offices that invest off their own permanent balance sheet, Applied Digital is fully subject to SEC reporting, quarterly earnings, and at-the-market equity issuance programs.
Does Applied Digital Corp. participate in fund commitments or only direct deals?
The company exclusively builds and operates its own assets directly — it does not make fund commitments, write LP checks, or run a co-investment vehicle. All capital is deployed into wholly or majority-owned subsidiary projects, specifically the Ellendale (ND) and Garden City (TX) campuses, plus the internal cluster-hosting operation known as Sai Computing.
What investment stages does Applied Digital Corp. typically target?
Applied Digital targets the earliest stage of infrastructure development — speculative land acquisition, site permitting, substation engineering, and the procurement of long-lead-time transformers and generators. Once a campus earns a take-or-pay contract from a hyperscale AI customer, the company rapidly moves to modular shell construction.
Which sectors does Applied Digital Corp. explicitly avoid?
The company does not invest in retail colocation, fiber services, consumer broadband, or standard enterprise data centers that serve generic corporate IT workloads. The entire portfolio is purpose-built for AI workloads, specifically high-density GPU clusters requiring direct liquid cooling and behind-the-meter power generation that bypasses standard utility interconnection timelines.
How does Applied Digital Corp. source proprietary deal flow?
Deal flow flows from three convergent points: site-level power engineers who scout sub-one-cent-per-kilowatt gas generation sites in unloaded substation regions, a customer origination network anchored by Wes Cummins's relationships with mega-scale AI operators, and the company's public equity desk, which manages direct sales of common stock to customers as a capital-source alignment tool.
Where does the company's growth capital come from?
The firm raises capital through at-the-market equity sales on Nasdaq, private placements of common stock, and construction debt placed against rated capacity contracts. In 2022 and 2023 multiple tranches of share issuance were reported to public filings, including a sale directly to a large off-shore investment vehicle tied to a customer that the firm has not publicly named.
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