By Owen Tucker-Smith

Applied Digital shares climbed Tuesday after the company confirmed that Macquarie Asset Management would invest up to $5 billion in the AI company's data centers.

Shares were recently up 23% to $9.55 in premarket trading. The stock's highest closing price in the past year was $10.68, reached in November; it's up 40% in the past 52 weeks.

Earlier Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported Macquarie's investment in Applied Digital.

The Dallas-based artificial-intelligence infrastructure company said early Tuesday that Macquarie would invest up to $900 million into the company's Ellendale high-performance computing data-center campus in North Dakota, and that the asset manager had a right of first refusal to invest $4.1 billion in future data centers. That agreement will last 30 months.

Applied Digital noted that the investment will cover project-level debt, and that Macquarie will receive 15% equity in the company's high-performance computing-business segment.

"The significant progress at the Ellendale HPC campus makes this a very compelling opportunity for us as well as for potential hyperscale customers," said Anton Moldan, senior managing director of Macquarie Asset Management.

The new funding will be used to repay debt Applied Digital took on to build the facilities in North Dakota and will allow it to recover over $300 million of its equity investment in them, WSJ reported.

Wes Cummins, Applied Digital's chief executive, said the deal also provides a significant amount of the equity needed to build data centers that require enormous amounts of power--more than two gigawatts, WSJ said.

Write to Owen Tucker-Smith at owen.tucker-smith@wsj.com.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 14, 2025 08:28 ET (13:28 GMT)

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