May 21, 2025 | Posted by Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji
Applied Digital is looking to develop a multi-billion-dollar data center in Deuel County, South Dakota which could see up to $16 billion in investment and create up to 200 high-paying jobs. In addition, Applied Digital has committed to improving local fiber infrastructure, and to minimize the water and noise impact of the project.
“When we take a large amount of energy and we put that energy into these buildings for the computers to do the work that they do, they generate a lot of heat,” Phillips said. “If you have a thing that you’re trying to cool down, whether it’s a data center or really anything, if you look at other markets for data centers such as Phoenix or Dallas or Virginia or other places that are much hotter, you end up putting a lot of either energy or water into cooling those facilities.”
“South Dakota, Toronto is much colder than some of those other places. It becomes less expensive from a power perspective to cool buildings, because it’s cooler, we’re also able to reduce the amount of water that’s consumed, for those buildings,” Phillips said.