If You'd Invested $10,000 in Applied Digital (APLD) Stock 3 Years Ago, Here's How Much You'd Have Today (Spoiler: You Could Buy a Fancy New Car!)

Key Points

• Applied Digital is finding a lot of success building data centers.

• Data centers are increasingly in demand, to power cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and more.

• 10 stocks we like better than Applied Digital ›

So back in early October of 2022, you plunked $10,000 into shares of Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD). What's that worth now? Let's take a look.

That $10,000 investment would have become a stake worth around $144,500! That means your money would have grown at an average annual rate of 144%, which is quite impressive. In contrast, the S&P 500 index, which includes 500 of America's biggest companies, averaged gains of 24% during the same period -- enough to turn $10,000 into $19,000. That's still very respectable, of course, as the S&P 500's long-term average is closer to 10%.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Image source: Getty Images.

What does Applied Digital do?

It has actually shifted its focus over the years. Its former names offer some clues. It began as Applied Science Products in 2021 and changed its name to Applied Blockchain in 2021, before taking on Applied Digital in 2022. It boasts that it has been named "Best Data Center in the Americas 2025" by Datacloud and notes that it "designs, builds, and operates high-performance, sustainably engineered data centers and colocation services for artificial intelligence, cloud, networking, and blockchain workloads."

You now have an idea of why Applied Digital would have boosted your net worth by so much. It's building data centers, which have become critical, thanks to the growing use of AI. Data center demand is huge and growing, boding well for Applied Digital's future.

The stock has been volatile, so make sure you can handle that if you're interested in investing. And certainly learn a lot more about it before you do, too.

Should you invest $1,000 in Applied Digital right now?

Before you buy stock in Applied Digital, consider this:

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Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $621,976!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,150,085!*

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Selena Maranjian has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.