➤ Key Highlights
Applied Digital is building “Delta Forge 1,” a $3.6B AI campus in Boyce, Louisiana.
Two initial facilities total 300 MW of critical IT load across ~300 acres.
The site was chosen for direct access to energy infrastructure.
~200 permanent jobs plus 1,000+ peak construction jobs.
Initial operations are targeted for mid-2027.
➤ The Signal
The data-center map is being redrawn by power availability, not metros.
Secondary, energy-rich geographies are now winning Tier-1 capital.
Speed-to-power is the new site-selection tiebreaker.
The dominant data-center story of this cycle has been Texas. This deal is the counterpoint: a multibillion-dollar AI campus going to a 300-acre site in rural central Louisiana — not Dallas, not Phoenix — because the binding constraint is electrons, and Cenla could deliver them.
Three hundred megawatts in a single first phase is utility-scale demand parked beside an existing power corridor. The location decision is essentially an energy decision wearing a real-estate costume.
For developers and site selectors, the lesson generalizes: the next wave of gigawatt-class capital flows to wherever firm generation and interconnect can be sourced quickest — increasingly rural, increasingly outside the saturated primary metros whose queues are full.
➤ Implications
Expect more Tier-1 capital in Tier-3 places: Gulf South, Midwest, Mountain West parcels with power adjacency. Land basis is cheap; the scarce, priced input is the path to megawatts.
➤ Key Takeaway
In data centers, geography now follows the grid — and the grid is leading capital out of the obvious metros.
Source: Louisiana Economic Development / Data Center Knowledge — June 2026
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