Central Louisiana just landed one of the biggest construction jobs in its history. Applied Digital broke ground on Delta Forge 1, a $3.6 billion artificial-intelligence campus in Boyce, near the I-49 corridor in Rapides Parish, the company confirmed in late June. The Dallas-based developer is building it for large-scale AI training and inference, the workloads now driving most of the country’s data center pipeline.
What’s getting built in Boyce
The first phase is two 150-MW facilities spread across more than 500 acres. Applied Digital has designed the campus to support an initial 430 MW of utility power, with up to 300 MW of critical IT load and headroom to grow past 2028. Site development started in January, and the company expects initial operations by the middle of 2027. The lease runs 15 years with three five-year renewals, so this isn’t a speculative shell. It’s built around a long-term tenant commitment.
Cooling is the detail worth watching. Delta Forge 1 uses a closed-loop water system that recirculates rather than consuming a steady supply, which matters in a region where water permitting can stall a project before the first slab is poured. Inland AI campuses are increasingly winning approvals on exactly this point, and Applied Digital leaned on it in its Louisiana pitch.
Why central Louisiana
The economics are regional as much as technical. Louisiana Economic Development pegs the project at roughly 200 permanent on-site jobs paying about 150% of the state average wage, plus more than 1,000 construction jobs at peak. For a parish outside the usual data center clusters of Virginia, Texas, and Arizona, that’s a meaningful base. Power availability and land cost are pulling hyperscale-grade construction into secondary markets, and central Louisiana now has a flagship to point to.
Delta Forge 1 also fits the pattern showing up across the data center construction market, where utility-scale power commitments, not square footage, set the schedule. The 430-MW figure tells you more about this project than any building dimension would.
The harder question is whether the grid and the supply chain keep pace with announcements like this one. Applied Digital has a tenant, a lease, and dirt moving. The next 18 months will show whether the power shows up on time.