Citizens has maintained a Market Outperform rating on Applied Blockchain Inc. (NASDAQ: APLD) and preserved a $40.00 price target, saying the company's AI infrastructure footprint and contracted leases leave room for significant upside.
The research note highlights Applied Digital's 400 MW of purpose-built capacity at the North Ellen campus, also called Polaris Forge 1, which Citizens says is fully leased to CoreWeave. According to the firm, the campus will be brought online in phases: the first 100 MW was slated to be ready for service in November 2025, an additional 150 MW is scheduled for mid-2026, and the final 150 MW is expected in 2027.
Citizens pointed to CoreWeave's rapid top-line expansion as reinforcing demand for that capacity, citing a roughly $49.6 billion valuation and a reported 235.4% increase in revenue over the last twelve months, per InvestingPro data. The research note also calls attention to short-term market performance for CoreWeave, noting a 27.46% return in the most recent week and an approximately 137.88% gain over the past year.
Beyond the Polaris Forge 1 campus, Citizens emphasized an existing 200 MW lease Applied Blockchain has signed with an investment-grade hyperscaler. That agreement includes an option to expand by another 800 MW, potentially enabling a full 1 GW deployment under that contract structure.
More broadly, the firm underscores Applied Blockchain's 4.3 GW active development pipeline, which it says places the company among the largest high-performance computing and AI infrastructure providers in North America. Using its pipeline assumptions, Citizens estimated that the 4.3 GW of development could hypothetically translate to about $124 of value per share for shareholders. The research note further flagged an extended pipeline of more than 5 GW of additional power as a source of incremental upside beyond that calculation.
The research note situates Applied Blockchain's prospects within a broader, fast-moving AI infrastructure market. Citizens referenced recent financial and strategic moves by CoreWeave as part of that context. Those updates include a Deutsche Bank upgrade of CoreWeave to a Buy rating with an increased price target of $140, positioned ahead of CoreWeave's planned first full-year guidance for 2026.
CoreWeave has also secured a $2 billion equity investment from NVIDIA, a transaction Citizens says will accelerate development of over 5 GW of capacity through 2030 and increase NVIDIA's ownership stake in CoreWeave to roughly 9%, consistent with NVIDIA's data center strategy. Additional analyst actions cited in the note include DA Davidson's reiteration of a Buy rating and a $110 price target for CoreWeave, and HSBC's decision to maintain a Reduce rating while cutting its price target to $41 amid concerns over rising interest costs.
Finally, the research note referenced CoreWeave's marketing efforts, noting the company launched an integrated brand campaign during the Winter Olympics titled "Ready for Anything, Ready for AI," featuring Chance the Rapper, as part of efforts to position the firm in the AI cloud market.
Context and implications
Citizens' reaffirmed Market Outperform rating on Applied Blockchain rests on a combination of contracted capacity, phased service dates for a purpose-built campus, and a multi-gigawatt development pipeline. The firm's valuation work translates those capacity metrics into a per-share value estimate while noting further optional expansion and an extended pipeline as sources of additional upside.
Investors and market participants tracking AI infrastructure capacity and large-scale data-center deployments will likely view the leasing schedules, hyperscaler commitments, and third-party strategic investments noted in the research report as key indicators of demand and capital allocation in the sector.