BOYCE, La. — Applied Digital Corp. announced plans to develop a $3.6 billion artificial intelligence data center campus in Rapides Parish, marking the company’s first Louisiana operation and one of the largest economic development projects in Central Louisiana in decades.
The project, known as Delta Forge 1, will support large-scale AI training and inference workloads and is expected to create 200 direct full-time jobs, more than 1,000 construction jobs at peak activity and an estimated 218 indirect jobs, according to Louisiana Economic Development.
Applied Digital said the campus will initially include two facilities totaling 300 megawatts of critical IT load on about 300 acres with direct access to energy infrastructure. The company plans to use its closed-loop cooling technology designed for high-density AI computing environments.
Site development began in January 2026, with initial operations expected to start in mid-2027.
Dallas-based Applied Digital designs and operates data centers and colocation facilities for artificial intelligence, cloud and high-performance computing workloads. The company said the Louisiana campus is intended to expand its infrastructure footprint as demand for AI computing capacity grows.
Cleco will provide electric power for the campus. Cleco President and CEO Bill Fontenot described the development as the largest economic opportunity in the utility’s history and said the investment reflects growing demand for technology and infrastructure projects in Central Louisiana.
Applied Digital qualified for Louisiana’s state and local sales and use tax exemption on qualifying data center equipment purchases under legislation approved during the 2024 regular legislative session.
State and regional economic development officials said the project positions Central Louisiana to compete for additional technology and infrastructure investment tied to AI and advanced computing industries.