Fermi has signed a 600MW power deal with a hyperscaler, while its lease with TensorWave has officially been terminated.
Fermi has agreed a deal with an investment-grade hyperscaler to develop 600MW of power at its planned Project Matador data center campus in Texas.
However, the company has officially ended a planned lease agreement with AI cloud provider TensorWave, which means it once again has no tenants for its upcoming campus, at least for now.
The power capacity will be brought online beginning next year, and the customer is providing $200 million up front. Although the company has not yet signed a lease with the hyperscaler, Fermi said the client "is making financial and development commitments ahead of finalizing a lease, reflecting the importance of securing access to power within its targeted delivery timeline."
In addition to the funds for bringing power to the site, the hyperscaler is providing $15 million through an early construction and site development agreement, which "establishes a framework for advancing site preparation and construction activities as soon as possible to maintain the customer's desired schedule."
The two companies are also finalizing a $90 million structural steel and building materials purchase agreement, which would "enable the customer to leverage critical long-lead materials Fermi secured in advance, accelerating the customer's planned construction of multiple data center facilities on Project Matador."
"Hyperscalers want sites that are ready with permitted power, and Fermi's Project Matador is one of the few that can meet that demand today," said Lee McIntire, Fermi CEO. "Our head start in speed to power is a key reason an investment-grade hyperscaler has signed up for 600MW and committed more than $200 million up front to accelerate construction at Project Matador, with an additional $90 million contemplated."
"We believe this is just the start of converting our strong pipeline of customers. If we successfully turn this pipeline of prospective customers into leases, it would completely fill our 2.2GW of current capacity. This gives us growing confidence in our path forward and puts us in a strong position to evolve from pre-revenue, pre-lease to the next phase of growth."
The news is a welcome boost for Fermi, which also revealed that its deal with TensorWave is officially dead. The company had been set to take up to 650MW of data center space at Project Matador, in a deal underwritten by chip firm AMD, but earlier this month it was revealed that the deadline for closing the agreement had been missed.
At the time, McIntire said: "Both Fermi and TensorWave remain committed to this lease, and we are continuing to work through the remaining conditions prior to close."
But Thursday's statement from the company said: "Fermi and TensorWave have terminated the data center lease and services agreement signed in August 2026. The AMD credit support agreement associated with TensorWave is also terminated."
Fermi was founded in January 2025 by former Texas governor and energy secretary Rick Perry and Toby Neugebauer. That October, it went public at a $15 billion valuation, despite not having brought any IT capacity online.
The company hopes to develop Project Matador, which could become a massive 17GW data center and energy campus near Amarillo, Texas, on land owned by the Texas Tech University System.
Project Matador's capacity figures remain strictly theoretical. In December 2025, a proposed tenant pulled out of a $150 million data center lease on the site, sending the stock crashing.
Fermi denied that the tenant was Amazon, despite a report from Business Insider stating that Fermi CEO Neugebauer told the publication during a phone call that Amazon was the tenant.
The agreement, while worth an initial $150 million, would have paid Fermi more than $20 billion over the next 20 years, according to Business Insider, again citing the data center developer's CEO.
In April, Neugebauer and Miles Everson, Fermi's then CFO, departed the company.
Neugebauer's departure was messy, with the former CEO repeatedly trying to wrest control of the company back. Fermi and Neugebauer, who remains the company's largest shareholder, have traded insults via press release. McIntire took over following Neugebauer's ouster.
Former Governor Rick Perry, whom Neugebauer repeatedly donated to while Perry was in office, was not reelected to the Fermi board last month, according to The Texas Tribune.
Perry's son is the company's second-largest shareholder through Caddis Capital. In May, Griffin Perry backed Fermi against Neugebauer and said that Neugebauer was trying to "seize control of the company in pursuit of a hasty and ill-advised sale."
Neugebauer voted against Rick Perry's board reelection.
Fermi's share price, which hit a new low of $1.55 earlier this month, rallied slightly on news of the hyperscaler agreement, reaching $2.15, a far cry from its $30 IPO price. Today the firm also released its quarterly financial results, which revealed a $141.6 million net loss for the three months ending in September.
The company's debt also rose sharply to $958.4 million.