While Nvidia has dominated headlines as the face of the artificial intelligence boom, a smaller company called Applied Digital has been quietly delivering even bigger stock market gains — and a new deal could push the rally further, according to reports from The Motley Fool, Yahoo Finance, and the Globe and Mail.
Applied Digital is an AI infrastructure company. Rather than making the chips that power AI models, it builds and operates the data centers that house them — the physical real estate of the AI economy. As companies race to develop and deploy AI, they need vast amounts of computing space and power, and that demand has been "supercharging" Applied Digital's growth, according to MSN.
The latest catalyst is a new deal, the details of which have not been fully disclosed in available reports, but which analysts suggest could send the stock higher still.
The story is a useful corrective to the Nvidia-centric narrative that has defined AI investing for the past few years. Infrastructure plays — the picks-and-shovels businesses that supply what AI builders need — can sometimes outperform the chip giants that get all the attention.
For everyday investors, it's a reminder that in a technology gold rush, the companies selling the land and the equipment don't always get the spotlight, but they can still capture enormous value.