Applied Digital said Tuesday that it has secured access to up to 1 gigawatt of potential power capacity in Finland for an AI data center campus, its first development outside the United States, Yahoo Finance reported. The company expects initial power to be available beginning in 2028.

What Happened

Applied Digital did not disclose where in Finland the campus will be or who is supplying the power. It said the project will be built in phases tied to customer demand and regulatory approvals, with the aim of eventually scaling to the full 1 gigawatt.

The company said it has started marketing the site and is already in discussions with large global hyperscale customers. No lease has been announced.

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Shares rose more than 2% in premarket trading Tuesday, according to Yahoo Finance. The stock was down more than 12% for the year to date before the announcement.

Why It Matters

Until now Applied Digital's growth has come from building and leasing capacity in North Dakota to AI cloud and hyperscale tenants. Finland gives it a second geography at a time when power availability, more than land or capital, is often the limiting factor for new AI campuses.

CEO Wes Cummins described Finland as a "deliberate first step" rather than a shift in strategy and said the company remains focused on executing its U.S. projects. Applied Digital pointed to Finland's climate, energy system, connectivity and room to build at scale, which it said resemble the conditions behind its North Dakota operations. A cool climate reduces the energy needed for cooling, one reason Nordic countries have attracted data center builders for years; Google has operated a data center in Hamina, Finland, since 2011.

The U.S. Business Behind It

The Finnish announcement comes as Applied Digital ramps up at home. The company recently brought another 75 megawatts of critical IT load online at its Polaris Forge 1 campus in North Dakota, bringing operational capacity there to 250 megawatts. That campus is fully leased and contracted for 400 megawatts at full buildout.

At the end of fiscal 2026, Applied Digital had about 1.4 gigawatts of contracted critical IT load across five U.S. campuses, representing roughly $36 billion of contracted revenue over initial lease terms of 15 years. Revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter was $258.7 million, up 407% from a year earlier.

Those figures frame the scale of the Finnish plan. A full 1 gigawatt would amount to more than two-thirds of the company's entire contracted U.S. load, though Applied Digital has described the power as potential capacity, not a committed build.

What to Watch

Applied Digital reports fiscal first-quarter 2027 results after the market close Wednesday, with a conference call at 5 p.m. ET. That call is management's first chance to add detail on the Finnish site's location, power partner and cost. The bigger signal will be whether one of the hyperscalers it is talking to signs a lease, and on what timeline relative to the 2028 power date.