Applied Digital has received its first tranche of funding from investment firm Macquarie.

The cryptomine-turned-AI data center firm announced this week that it has received the initial funding from its previously announced equity financing facility of up to $5 billion with Macquarie Asset Management (MAM).

The first draw of $112.5 million was funded by MAM-managed funds and will support the build-out of Applied Digital’s 400MW data center campus in Ellendale, North Dakota (aka Polaris Forge 1), that is being fully leased to CoreWeave.

Proceeds from the MAM facility will be used toward completing the build-out of the campus. Further tranches from the $5bn facility will allow Applied to complete the project and expand further.

“Securing this funding at the asset level is especially important in an asset-heavy business like ours. It gives us the capital to complete Polaris Forge 1 and provides a clear path to scale additional campuses. With Macquarie’s support, we’re able to strengthen our balance sheet and accelerate the build-out of our AI Factory platform. With MAM’s expertise and relationships, we believe Applied Digital is positioned as one of the fastest-growing developers in the US,” said Wes Cummins, chairman and CEO of Applied Digital.

Construction on the campus began in September 2022 as crypto and HPC development. The site was designed to host 400MW of critical IT load, with the company claiming it has more than 1GW of power capacity currently under various stages of load study.

MAM and Applied Digital first announced the $5bn funding deal back in January. Under the deal, MAM will invest up to $900 million in Applied's Ellendale campus in development in North Dakota, and has the right of first refusal to invest an additional $4.1 billion in future data centers for 30 months.

"As the demand for AI and HPC capacity continues to accelerate, we believe Applied Digital will distinguish itself as a valuable partner to hyperscale customers, with its differentiated portfolio of near-term power availability that has been built by a pioneering leadership team,” added Anton Moldan, senior managing director of Macquarie Asset Management.

“We are excited to partner with Applied Digital to build and scale its HPC data center platform. Our global experience as an owner and manager of some of the largest private data center platforms in the world positions us as an ideal partner to help Applied Digital become an industry-leading data center platform.”

The company already operates a 180MW data center in Ellendale, known as ELN01. The next building, the 369,000 sq ft (34,281 sqm) ELN02 – set to offer 100MW – is for HPC hosting.

Elsewhere, the company has a 106MW facility in Jamestown, North Dakota, known as JMS01, and is also planning a 200MW facility in Iowa.

Applied Digital closed $375 million in financing for its Ellendale campus in February 2025, and in May, it was reported that the company had proposed a "multi-billion-dollar" data center in Toronto, South Dakota, that could offer 430MW of IT capacity. Another development in North Dakota, outside Fargo, is also in the works.

The company was founded as Applied Blockchain but does not mine its own Bitcoin, traditionally hosting hardware on behalf of other cryptomining firms. It now also hosts HPC and AI hardware amid massive demand for available capacity.

Applied is also offering its own cloud services (at least for now) and has previously said it will host and offer access to Nvidia Blackwell GPUs.