CEO Interview: Wes Cummins of Applied Digital
Cummins’ Applied Digital builds the data centers that feed the world’s hunger for AI. We asked him about his journey as CEO and whether AI looks to him like the dot-com bubble.
It’s a rare skill in business when you can see around corners.
In 2022, before OpenAI had debuted ChatGPT, Wes Cummins pivoted his Bitcoin mining operation into building AI data centers. It turned out to be a case of seeing the future before it got here.
Today, these AI data centers power our world’s insatiable hunger for GPUs. Cummins’ Dallas-based Applied Digital now has $16 billion in contracted revenue over the next 15 years and two hyperscale customers. Its first facility came online this month, putting it well ahead of many others who are just breaking ground.
In the conversation that follows, Cummins told me about how he saw the demand spike coming, why the CEO role feels like going from fan to head coach, and whether we’re hyping AI like it’s 1999.
Take us back to 18-year-old Wes. What was your grand plan?
I grew up on a potato farm in Idaho. Leaving and going to St. Louis, Missouri to school was a big shock for me.
By 18, my professional football aspirations had gone out the window. I did play football in college, but at an academic focused institution. It was a great experience. I started doing electrical engineering and my premed curriculum because I didn’t know what I was going to do. I decided to take some business classes and I just fell in love with it.
From there, I got an internship at an investment firm. This was right in the dot-com era, 1999 and 2000. So I got a lot of exposure to tech investing – the good part at first and then the bad part after that.
I fell in love with investing and technology, and from there I ran my own hedge fund. That was until about five years ago when I saw a big market shift. I’d seen these shifts as an investor before. This time I decided I would go all in and actually start a business to seize on that shift. That’s how Applied Digital started.
CEOs and investors see the world very differently. What was your biggest surprise switching from an investing role to running the business?
A lot of investors say they take the long-term view. Before I was CEO, I thought I worked with a long-term view.
But when you’re looking at it from a CEO horizon, things look really different. I saw how short-term-oriented I really was as an investor. Even as a long-term investor, you’re basing decisions on no more than a year out. That feels “long term” in public markets. As a CEO, you’re thinking more like three to five years out. That’s been a huge shift for me.
The other aha moment had to do with managing people. In the investment world, I could run a big successful hedge fund with very few people and one or two specific skill sets. As CEO, especially as we grow fast, I need lots of different people with very diverse skill sets.
What I’ve loved about it is feeling like the head coach. I’ve got to make sure I’m putting the right players on the field. As an investor, I was more of a fan.
What I’ve loved about it is feeling like the head coach. I’ve got to make sure I’m putting the right players on the field. As an investor, I was more of a fan. What does the fan do? They get really upset or they get really happy depending on whether the team wins or loses. But as the head coach, you’re much more invested. You’re developing the team, you’re developing the team strategy, you’re developing everything.
Applied Digital started out building infrastructure for Bitcoin. Can you talk about the pivot to AI?
When we took on the opportunity to build Bitcoin data centers in the United States, we did the hyperscale route for Bitcoin and helped make Marathon the largest Bitcoin miner in the world. Now we’re doing that same thing for AI. There are other Bitcoin miners who transitioned to do AI, but we were really early – we started in 2022, before ChatGPT.
