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$2.7 Billion in Data Center Savings: New Applied Digital Report Positions North Dakota as the Epicenter for AI Infrastructure
Polaris Forge “AI Factory” model outlines how smart site selection and cooling design can cut costs by up to $60M per year per campus DALLAS, June 17, 2025
About this update from Applied Digital Corporation
[{"type":"text","content":"Polaris Forge “AI Factory” model outlines how smart site selection and cooling design can cut costs by up to $60M per year per campus\nDALLAS, June 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Applied Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: APLD) (“Applied Digital” or the “Company”), a designer, builder, and operator of next-generation digital infrastructure designed for High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications, announces the release of a new white paper, AI Factory: A Case Study for Total Cost of Ownership. The paper details how site selection and data center design decisions can dramatically reduce the long-term costs of generative AI infrastructure. “AI factories represent a fundamentally new category of digital infrastructure,” said Wes Cummins, Chairman and CEO of Applied Digital. “Their success hinges on making the right decisions up front, especially around power and cooling. This white paper helps lay out what those decisions look like and why regions like North Dakota can outperform conventional markets on both cost and sustainability.” Applied Digital also introduced Polaris Forge as the name for its North Dakota-based data center region. With four campuses in various stages of development, Polaris Forge is built for scale, optimized for AI workloads, driven by renewable power and supported by infrastructure that prioritizes total cost of ownership. Key findings from the white paper include: AI factories require 15-30 times the power density of traditional data centers, driving the need for new power and cooling strategies.Site selection directly impacts cost; choosing areas with stranded power and cooler climates can reduce annual electricity costs by $50 to $60 million per year compared to other existing 100MW data centers, or up to $2.7 billion over a 30-year lifespan.Liquid cooling and free cooling are essential to long-term efficiency, enabling significantly lower Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE).North Dakota offers more than 220 days of free cooling annually, which contributes to lower operational costs and improved sustainability.Polaris Forge 01’s design, featuring a closed-loop, waterless, direct-to-chip cooling system and access to gigawatt-scale stranded power demonstrates how infrastructure purpose-built for AI can achieve a projected PUE of 1.18 and a WUE near zero. The company’s existing Elle...