Funding of 2 Trillion Won for AI Data Center... North Dakota Accelerates 'AI Factory'

Applied Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: APLD) has completed a private placement of $1.59 billion 7.0% secured senior notes—approximately KRW 2.2 trillion—to finance the ELN-04 data center at its Polaris Forge 1 campus in North Dakota, and has executed a trust agreement detailing the related collateral and contractual structure. Simultaneously, the company arranged a Goldman Sachs–led secured revolving credit facility of $350 million (approx. KRW 490 billion) with an additional $200 million (approx. KRW 280 billion) accordion feature, giving it up to $550 million (approx. KRW 770 billion) in borrowing capacity for data center development and working capital. The notes carry stringent financial and collateral covenants—including a first-priority pledge over subsidiary assets and equity and an $81 million (approx. KRW 110 billion) debt service reserve—and the parent has provided a completion guarantee for the ELN-04 project.

In April, Applied Digital signed a 15-year lease with an investment-grade U.S. hyperscaler at its new 430 MW AI factory campus, Delta Forge 1, bringing its total contracted lease revenue to over $23 billion (about KRW 32 trillion). In June, the company secured additional long-term leases at the follow-on Delta Forge 2 campus, further expanding its AI data center leasing portfolio.

Applied Digital, a Nasdaq-listed firm, designs, builds and operates high-performance, high-power data centers for AI, cloud and blockchain workloads. Through roughly 15-year leases with partners such as CoreWeave, it is scaling AI factory campuses of several hundred megawatts across North Dakota and the U.S. South. As generative AI drives a surge in GPU infrastructure demand, North America’s data center industry is increasingly funding power-intensive AI facilities through large private debt issuances, project financing and long-term leases.