$3.6B Applied Digital AI Factory in Louisiana Needs 10 Low Voltage Systems

Applied Digital is building an AI factory in a Rapides Parish village of about a thousand people, and unlike most of the campuses we cover, this one is not waiting on a rezoning. Site development started in January 2026. Initial operations are expected mid-2027.

That is roughly an eighteen-month clock from dirt to load. If you want to be on Delta Forge 1, the conversation is happening now.

Two Numbers That Are Not The Same Thing

Applied Digital has published two large figures for this campus, and confusing them will wreck your estimate.

• $3.6 billion — the capital investment in the campus. This is a build number.
• $7.5 billion — a 15-year lease signed with an undisclosed investment-grade U.S. hyperscaler covering the 300 MW of critical IT load. This is revenue over fifteen years. Nobody is building $7.5 billion worth of anything.

We have skipped projects over exactly this confusion before. Lease value is a financing and tenancy fact. It tells you the tenant is real and creditworthy — which matters enormously for whether the job actually gets built — but it is not a scope figure. Price off capex and capacity. Never off lease revenue.

When Two Methods Agree, Believe Them

Here is the part that makes this campus unusually easy to size, and it is worth walking through because it almost never happens this cleanly.

Method one — announced capital investment. Our standard for a $1B-plus announced data center number is 4 percent flat, no system-count multiplier, because those headline figures bundle land, power infrastructure and IT hardware. Four percent of $3.6 billion is $144 million.

Method two — capacity. Applied Digital states 300 MW of critical IT load across two initial facilities. Our compute-MW anchor is roughly $500,000 per MW, derived from a campus where both the LV package and the megawatts were published. That gives $150 million.

The two land within four percent of each other. Compare that to the campus we covered two days ago, where the same two methods came out 1.8 times apart because the announced figure bundled land and program and there was no building-only number to reconcile them.

The difference is that $3.6 billion here is a genuine capex figure for a defined two-building scope, not a decade-long program total. When the announced number is real, capacity pricing confirms it. When the two methods diverge wildly, that is your signal that the headline is bundling something you are not going to build.

Call it roughly $150 million in low voltage across the initial 300 MW.

Price The IT Load, Not The Utility Draw

One more number to keep straight. Applied Digital has described Delta Forge 1 as a 430 MW total utility power campus with 300 MW of critical IT load across two 150 MW facilities.

The 430 MW is what the site pulls from the grid — compute plus cooling plus everything else. The 300 MW is what you price against. Using utility draw instead of IT load would have inflated the estimate by 43 percent. Every AI campus publishes both, usually in the same paragraph, and they are never labeled clearly.

Cleco Is Building A Power Plant For This

Regional utility Cleco will serve the campus, and the scale of that is worth stating plainly: this is the largest single load Cleco Power has served in the company's ninety-plus year history, described by its CEO as the largest economic development opportunity in that entire span.

To serve it, Cleco is constructing a 756 MW natural gas plant, with Applied Digital reportedly covering the full plant and interconnection cost.

Two implications for low voltage. First, the tenant and the developer are both financially committed at a level that makes schedule slippage expensive for them, which usually means they hold subs to dates hard. Second — and this is the recurring one — integrated systems testing lives downstream of energization. A dedicated generating plant on a parallel schedule is a dependency you did not create and cannot control. Qualify your commissioning dates against power availability, in writing.

The Ten Systems

Signal scores this campus an 8 out of 10 with a full mission-critical system set:

• Fiber and outside plant
• Structured cabling
• Access control and CCTV
• Fire alarm
• BMS and controls
• Networking
• DAS
• Grounding and bonding

Applied Digital uses closed-loop cooling to support high-density AI compute, which pushes the BMS and controls package well past a conventional building automation scope. Closed-loop systems mean more instrumentation, tighter integration with the electrical plant, and a controls narrative that has to survive commissioning at load.

The Building Template Is Public — Use It

You do not have to guess at the layout. Applied Digital's Polaris Forge 1 campus in Ellendale, North Dakota is the template, and it is documented.

Building 1 there is a 369,000 square foot, three-story facility. Four data halls sit on the second and third floors. Central utilities and the network core sit on the first floor. Four standalone generator buildings add another 80,000 square feet. It was delivered in two 50 MW phases.

Read that layout again, because it changes your estimate. Most data center work is single-story slab-on-grade, where backbone is horizontal and pathway is cheap. A vertically stacked hall with the network core underneath the data halls is riser-dominant: more vertical pathway, more firestopping at every floor penetration, more coordination with structure, and a backbone design where riser capacity is planned for growth rather than pulled once. Multi-story also means material handling and reel logistics become a real line item.

Who Has Built This Before

McGough handled construction on Polaris Forge 1, scaling systems, workflows and on-site operations to Applied Digital's requirements. On a developer running a repeatable "Forge" product across multiple states, the incumbent builder relationship is the highest-value door in the building.

No general contractor, electrical, low voltage, fiber, security, fire alarm, BMS or commissioning contractor has been publicly named for Delta Forge 1 in the current record. That is not a dead end — it means the buyout has not been announced, on a job that is already moving dirt. Chase the developer's construction organization and the incumbent relationship rather than waiting for a bid list to appear.

The Tenant Is Anonymous Again

The lease is with an undisclosed investment-grade U.S. hyperscaler. Same structure we flagged on the Arkansas campus two days ago, and the same consequence: the tenant technology standard — approved manufacturers, labeling conventions, pathway fill rules, test documentation format — arrives under NDA after award.

Price base building firm. Carry tenant-driven scope as a defined allowance with a stated basis rather than a lump sum. Ask in RFI what cabling standard and test documentation format will govern. "To be provided" is a change order with a delay fuse on it.

A Thousand Workers In A Village Of A Thousand

Boyce is small. Rapides Parish is centered on Alexandria. The project is projected to create over 1,000 construction jobs at peak, alongside 200 permanent positions at 150 percent of the state average wage.

That ratio should be familiar by now. A peak workforce larger than the host community is a travel job, and travel jobs are priced with per diem, lodging, drive time, crew rotation and retention built into the number. Realistic feeder markets are Alexandria, Shreveport, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and Lafayette — and this is Applied Digital's first Louisiana location, so no incumbent regional LV contractor has an existing relationship on this campus to defend.

That last point is the opportunity. A first-in-state campus for a developer with a repeatable product means the contractor who performs here is positioned for whatever gets built next.

Track projects like this before the bid drops. LVN Signal monitors permits, bids, and construction news across the country and scores every project for low voltage opportunity. See what is in your market.