CoreWeave Ellendale ND data center, Ellendale, North Dakota

Applied Digital's Polaris Forge 1 data center campus in Ellendale, Dickey County, North Dakota, is operating under a long-term lease to CoreWeave, which is contracted for 400 megawatts of it in all. The first 100 megawatt building has run at full load since Applied Digital completed its second phase on November 24, 2025, the first of three contracted buildings on the campus.

Applied Digital signed two roughly 15-year leases with CoreWeave in June 2025 for 250 megawatts of critical IT load, expecting about $7 billion in revenue, with an option for CoreWeave to take 150 megawatts more. Applied Digital delivered the campus's second building in May 2026 and energized a 75-megawatt phase of it in July. The company came to Ellendale in 2021 because the town sits near a substation collecting power from wind farms across North and South Dakota, and its first data center there hired 35 people.

For a town of about 1,100 people, the stakes are large: Ellendale annexed the property in early 2025, and Mayor Don Flaherty said the city's taxable value of $3.5 million at the end of that year is expected to grow more than tenfold. "Could it blow up in my face?" Flaherty said of the town's bet on the company. "Absolutely." Jamie Walker, a former property manager in town, said construction workers doubled the rent on a one-bedroom apartment from about $600 to more than $1,200, pushing out lower-income families: "The regular Ellendale local is not winning as big as, say, Casey's or Cenex or the local bars."

Montana-Dakota Utilities customers have received credits because the data center's added demand raises the utility's revenue under a state cap on returns; the average customer saved about $70 in 2025. Applied Digital says it will be North Dakota's largest property taxpayer by 2028 or 2029, at more than $25 million a year, and also has data center projects near Harwood, Jamestown and Oliver County. In July 2026 the North Dakota Public Service Commission approved a roughly $110 million power project tied to the campus's next phase, Polaris Forge 2.