New York, February 23, 2026, 06:21 (EST) — Premarket
- Applied Digital slipped roughly 1% ahead of the bell, following a steep decline Friday.
- Investors are eyeing signs that debt financing for AI data centers is becoming tougher to lock down.
- The pending Cloud spin-out is still waiting on fresh equity financing, according to a recent filing.
Shares of Applied Digital Corporation dropped 1% to $28.74 ahead of Monday’s open, stretching a selloff that broke through the $30 level late last week. The data-center developer tumbled 7.9% Friday on a surge in trading volume, notching its eighth decline in a row. (StockAnalysis)
This kind of weakness is grabbing attention, given how sensitive investors have become about financing for the AI data-center expansion—and especially the cost. On Friday, Business Insider reported Blue Owl Capital ran into trouble sourcing debt for a $4 billion Pennsylvania data-center project linked to CoreWeave. BMO Capital Markets analyst Brennan Hawken called the debt challenge “a bit of a red flag.” (Business Insider)
Applied Digital is grappling with its own financing hurdle. According to a Feb. 17 filing, the company plans to fold its cloud business into Ekso Bionics in return for 138.2 million freshly issued Ekso shares. That would leave Applied Digital holding about 97% of the combined company’s stock before any related deals go through. But there’s a catch: the transaction hinges on a PIPE—private investment in public equity—that must close at the same time. (Applied Digital Corporation)
The filing puts closing sometime in the second calendar quarter of 2026, though it warns there’s no guarantee the business combination will actually happen. Governance terms in the filing would let Applied Digital pick four out of seven board members if it holds a majority of voting shares.
Applied Digital operates sprawling data centers geared toward AI and other compute-intensive tasks. CEO Wes Cummins has touted North Dakota’s “cool climate and abundant energy” as a selling point for luring major clients, following news that the company inked leases with two hyperscalers at separate campuses in the state. (Reuters)
The stock’s turned into a hotspot for quick-moving traders—a go-to gauge for how much risk folks want to take with AI infrastructure plays. On top of that, if there’s trouble brewing in private credit, it can hit the shares fast, even if the company itself hasn’t put out fresh news.
Bulls face a clear risk here—if the PIPE ends up bigger, or more dilutive, than hoped, that’s a problem. Any slippage pushing the deal to the year’s back half, or a failure to meet its conditions, could also weigh. And with AI infrastructure lending getting tighter, the company might need to tap equity even more, which only adds to stock pressure.
