BASX, a wholly owned subsidiary of AAON, has announced a partnership with Applied Digital Corporation, a designer, builder, and operator of next-generation digital infrastructure designed for High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications.
As part of the collaboration, BASX designed and manufactured a customised free cooling chiller system for Applied Digital's AI factory in Ellendale, North Dakota, known as Polaris Forge 1.
The system is purpose-built to meet the performance demands of AI infrastructure in a cold climate, while maximising energy efficiency and sustainability.
Built to endure the harshest climates, the free cooling chiller system performs in three optimised modes –– all with zero water use.
Full Free Cooling: Rejects 100% of the IT load using only pumps and fans.
Partial Free Cooling: Leverages ambient air to handle as much of the load as possible, supplementing with direct expansion (DX) cooling as needed.
Full Mechanical Cooling: Engages compressors and coils to provide full DX capacity during peak ambient conditions.
Chief development officer at Applied Digital, Todd Gale, said that as a leading provider of AI factories, designed and built specifically to support NVIDIA liquid-cooled GPUs, innovation is a core component of their business.
“We presented a challenge to BASX to develop a highly efficient chiller to leverage North Dakota's climate conditions and the demands presented by liquid-cooled servers and, as they are known to do, BASX engineered, designed, and built a world-class system that we are deploying at our Polaris Forge 1 site,” Gale said.
AAON CEO & BASX co-founder, Matt Tobolski, said that from the onset, this was about more than delivering standard HVAC — it was a collaboration between two teams determined to break away from cookie-cutter solutions.
"Applied Digital brought us a clear challenge, and we responded with a system engineered from the ground up to meet it. We solve problems at the root and build for what's next, not just what's easy,” he said.
AI factories like Polaris Forge 1 require 15 to 30 times the power density of traditional data centres, making conventional power and cooling strategies insufficient.
Meeting these demands requires infrastructure engineered from the ground up to support high-density, compute-intensive workloads.
As AI adoption accelerates, demand for high-efficiency cooling solutions continues to grow. Higher return fluid temperatures enabled by direct-to-chip cooling allow more heat to be rejected directly to ambient air, even in warmer conditions.
This system demonstrates a scalable approach to thermal management — designed for operators who prioritize innovation, efficiency, and long-term sustainability.