Project dossier · Ellendale, North Dakota

CoreWeave Ellendale ND Operating

Chip types: B200. Epoch AI estimates ~68 MW.

Key facts

Operator: CoreWeave
Owner: CoreWeave
Tenant: OpenAI
Size: 68 MW
Location: Ellendale, North Dakota
Stage today: Operating

Source
read 2026-08-14

What to do next

Next step: Already operating — the leverage now is enforcement: noise and water conditions, tax revenue tracking, and any expansion filing, which reopens the record.

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What has happened so far (17 events)

2022-09-08construction
Applied Blockchain (now Applied Digital) broke ground on a 180 MW data center facility in Ellendale, North Dakota (Dickey County), its second North Dakota site, with a five-year Energy Service Agreement signed with a local utility on September 1, 2022. · source
2023-03-07operational
Applied Digital announced the energization of its 180 MW Ellendale facility, completed six months after groundbreaking; Marathon Digital Holdings contracted for capacity with an option for an additional 70 MW, and the project was financed through a $20 million loan from Starion Bank. · source
2023-06-16operational
Applied Digital held a ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating the energization of its 180 MW Ellendale facility, attended by local congressional and state representatives; the company received final regulatory approval from the North Dakota Public Service Commission for its Electric Service Agreement. · source
2023-10-31construction
Applied Digital broke ground on a separate 100 MW, 342,000-square-foot HPC facility at the Ellendale campus designed for AI workloads including generative AI and machine learning, with capacity for nearly 50,000 Nvidia H100 SXM-class GPUs in a liquid-cooled configuration. · source
2024-01-16announcement
Applied Digital signed a conditional anchor tenant agreement at the Ellendale HPC facility for 100 MW over 10 years valued at approximately $2.2 billion, pending finalization of definitive lease documents and construction financing. · source
2024-03-08announcement
Applied Digital extended the 45-day negotiation period for the conditional anchor tenant agreement at the Ellendale HPC facility until March 30, 2024, with the 100 MW, 10-year deal still under negotiation. · source
2024-04-01financing
Applied Digital issued a $50 million unsecured convertible debenture to a single private investor with a 54-week term and no interest payments, with proceeds directed toward construction of the Ellendale HPC data center. · source
2024-05-24financing
Applied Digital issued a $42.1 million unsecured convertible debenture to advance construction of the Ellendale HPC data center, with a 54-week term, no interest, and a 5% original issue discount. · source
2024-06-07financing
Applied Digital secured a $125 million debt facility (expandable to $200 million) from CIM Group at 12% annual interest for a 3-year term, exclusively for buildout of the Ellendale HPC campus. · source
2024-12-17construction
Applied Digital announced the successful energization of the on-site main substation transformer at the Ellendale HPC campus, enabling equipment commissioning; the company also submitted a petition for property annexation to the City of Ellendale and received the Community Impact award at the 18th Annual Data Center Dynamics Awards. · source
2025-02-12financing
Applied Digital closed a $375 million interim financing with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) to repay a Macquarie Capital note and fund development of the first and second buildings at the Ellendale HPC campus. · source
2025-04-30financing
Applied Digital entered into a $150 million convertible preferred equity facility with institutional investors to advance development of the Ellendale multi-building HPC campus, with draws at company discretion in $25 million increments over a 36-month term. · source
2025-06-02announcement
Applied Digital announced a 250 MW AI data center lease with CoreWeave at the Ellendale campus for approximately 15 years, with an optional 150 MW expansion to 400 MW total; the first 100 MW building expected operational in Q4 2025 and the second 150 MW building by mid-2026, with anticipated total revenue of approximately $7 billion. · source
2025-08-29announcement
Applied Digital finalized an additional 150 MW lease with CoreWeave at the Polaris Forge 1 campus in Ellendale, bringing total contracted capacity to 400 MW across three lease agreements with approximately 15-year terms and total anticipated revenue of approximately $11 billion. · source
2025-10-27operational
Applied Digital achieved Ready for Service for Phase 1 (50 MW) of the first 100 MW building at Polaris Forge 1 in Ellendale for CoreWeave, featuring proprietary liquid cooling with near-zero water consumption. · source
2026-06-09financing
Applied Digital priced $1.59 billion in 7.000% senior secured notes due 2031 to fund construction of the fourth 150 MW building (ELN-04) at Polaris Forge 1 in Ellendale and repay a Goldman Sachs bridge loan. · source
2026-07-01operational
Applied Digital delivered Building 2 Phase 1 at Polaris Forge 1 in Ellendale, adding 75 MW and bringing total live campus capacity to 175 MW (100 MW from Building 1 plus 75 MW from Building 2), on schedule toward the 400 MW contracted total. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 12 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

North Dakota DEQ — Division of Air QualityThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
Search North Dakota DEQ — Division of Air Quality for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Search Ellendale planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
Search Ellendale property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

MISO (Midwest & Gulf) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
Southwest Power Pool (Plains) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
North Dakota Public Service Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 46.000, -98.530 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Around here

North Dakota briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.

Other tracked projects in North Dakota

Applied Digital Harwood ND — Harwood Under construction

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “CoreWeave Ellendale ND”, aigridwatch.com/projects/coreweave-ellendale-nd, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).