Applied Digital selects Brookwood, Alabama for its Delta Forge 2 AI campus
Source report: 2026-09-24 · Editorial analysis published: 2026-09-30
The company places its previously announced 210 MW lease at a 160-acre Brookwood campus, with operations targeted for 2028 and more than $3.2 billion of combined investment.
Analysis and practical implications
This section is our analysis and illustrative calculations, separate from the source report.
Brookwood is the disclosed location
Applied Digital announced on September 24 that its previously disclosed Delta Forge 2 campus will be built in Brookwood, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. The company describes an investment of more than 3.2 billion dollars by Applied Digital and its tenant. This is a site and development announcement. It does not mean the campus is already operating, and the investment figure is a forward-looking project total rather than current revenue or completed construction spending.
A 210 MW critical-load lease was announced earlier
The release links the site to a previously announced 210 MW critical IT load lease with a U.S.-based hyperscaler that the company describes as high investment grade. Critical IT load refers to computing equipment, not necessarily the project’s full utility draw after cooling and electrical losses. Applied Digital says operations are currently expected to begin in 2028. Delivery risk remains until buildings, substations, cooling systems and tenant equipment are commissioned and accepted.
The planned footprint is 1.26 million square feet
Delta Forge 2 is planned to cover approximately 1.26 million square feet on about 160 acres within a nearly 1,300-acre site. The difference between the developed parcel and the broader property may provide expansion room, but the release does not commit all 1,300 acres to the present 210 MW lease. Project tracking should separate land control, permitted footprint, building completion, utility capacity and energized customer load rather than turning the largest site number into current capacity.
Construction employment is expected to peak above 1,000
Applied Digital projects that construction employment will exceed 1,000 workers at peak and that the completed campus will support more than 100 full-time onsite roles. These are company forecasts, not current headcounts or guaranteed permanent positions. Local economic effects should be checked later through contractor payroll, hiring records and operating staffing. Large data centers create intense temporary construction demand while their long-term staffing profile is usually much smaller.
Community payments are scheduled over 20 years
The company commits 270 million dollars in community-benefit payments to the Tuscaloosa County Economic Development Authority over 20 years, in addition to educational taxes. It also estimates approximately 131.5 million dollars in education taxes over the same period plus sales, use and lodging revenue. These are planned and estimated future flows. Their timing and realised value depend on construction, operation and the applicable agreements, so they should not be counted as money already received by local bodies.
The cooling design is closed loop
Applied Digital says the campus will use closed-loop cooling and high-power-density infrastructure for AI training and inference. It also says it will pay the full cost required to serve its energy needs so those costs are not shifted to other Alabama Power customers. The release does not publish expected power-usage effectiveness, annual water consumption, backup generation, hourly grid impact or an operating energy mix. Those measurements will be necessary to evaluate environmental and grid claims after launch.
The campus sits within a larger contracted portfolio
The announcement calls Delta Forge 2 the fifth campus in Applied Digital’s AI Factory platform. Across five campuses, the company reports approximately 1.4 GW of critical IT load under long-term leases and about 36.2 billion dollars of contracted revenue over initial 15-year terms. Portfolio totals should not be assigned entirely to Brookwood. They also represent contracted future revenue before operating expenses, financing, construction execution and delivery milestones, rather than cash already earned.
Why the story matters to mining infrastructure
Applied Digital has roots in digital-asset infrastructure, while Delta Forge 2 is positioned for hyperscale AI. The transition shows how access to land, interconnection expertise and high-density cooling can support a different computing market. It does not imply that any ASIC fleet is being installed at Brookwood. Mining operators considering a similar conversion must account for stricter redundancy, networking, service-level and tenant-acceptance requirements than a flexible Bitcoin mining load usually needs.
Confirmed facts and next checkpoints
The release confirms Brookwood as the location, a 210 MW critical-load lease, a planned 1.26 million-square-foot footprint, more than 3.2 billion dollars of combined investment and a 2028 operating target. The employment, tax and community-benefit figures are projections or commitments over time. The practical checkpoints are permits, financing, utility work, building delivery, mechanical and electrical commissioning, tenant acceptance and the first reported energized IT load. Until then, Delta Forge 2 remains a project under development.
Source: Applied Digital ↗
Mining calculator ↗
