Fermi Lands First Anchor Tenant at Texas AI Campus in $6.5 Billion Deal
Published on 08/11/2026 at 17:52 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The wait for Fermi's first paying customer is finally over. Ten months after its public market debut, the data center developer has signed a binding lease agreement with TensorWave, a cloud provider specializing in artificial intelligence workloads, for its "Project Matador" site in Texas.
The 15-year contract locks in an initial capacity of 222 megawatts and is expected to generate roughly $6.5 billion in revenue over its full term. TensorWave also holds options to more than triple that allocation, pushing potential capacity beyond 650 megawatts — a structure that gives Fermi a clear path to scale the relationship if the initial phase performs as planned.
From Paper to Power: What's Already in the Ground
The deal marks a critical inflection point for a company that has spent its short public life defending a business model that, until now, had yet to convert its ambitious blueprints into contracted revenue. Fermi currently operates no active data centers, and the Matador site — spread across roughly 5,236 acres in Carson County — remains very much a construction project. Around $1.5 billion has already been sunk into the development, with 6 gigawatts of the planned 17-gigawatt ultimate capacity having cleared regulatory approval.
The build-out is advancing on multiple fronts. An EPC agreement with Primoris covers the installation of six Siemens turbines, while the first power delivery is penciled in for 2026. The initial tranche of capacity earmarked for TensorWave, however, won't be handed over until the second half of 2027, when the site is expected to host tens of thousands of AMD Instinct graphics processors for compute-intensive AI applications.
A Vote of Confidence — With Caveats
Investors greeted the announcement with a sharp rally. The stock jumped 16.04 percent to €6.15 in Tuesday trading, following Monday's news of the lease signing. That advance extends a recovery that has seen the shares climb 18.87 percent to €6.30, though even after the surge the equity remains roughly 77 percent below its 52-week high of €27.60, set last October.
Wall Street has taken notice. Mizuho analysts reaffirmed their "Outperform" rating with an $11 price target following the announcement, while Stifel has reiterated its buy recommendation with a more ambitious $17 target. The recent run-up puts Fermi's market capitalization at approximately €3.41 billion.
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Yet the enthusiasm comes with acknowledged execution risks. Seeking Alpha analysts have flagged that Fermi is still a pre-revenue operator in a capital-intensive business, and the company's balance sheet shows just $243 million in liquidity against $421 million in debt. Governance concerns also linger: the CEO and CFO both departed in April, and the recent removal of manager Neugebauer adds to a leadership churn that has tested investor patience. Insider sales totaling several million dollars have done little to calm those nerves.
The AMD Question
Speculation is mounting that a major AI player may be standing behind the lease as a guarantor. Media reports suggest a global leader in the AI sector could be backing the agreement, with AMD emerging as a plausible candidate given that AMD Ventures already holds a stake in TensorWave. Such an arrangement would provide additional credit comfort for a project of this scale, though Fermi has not confirmed any guarantor.
The company's second-quarter results, due Thursday, will offer the first hard look at how Fermi is financing its Texas build-out. Analysts expect a loss per share of roughly $0.06 for the period — a figure that will be scrutinized for what it reveals about the pace of spending against the backdrop of a now-visible revenue pipeline. For a company that has spent its first year as a public entity defending its vision, the TensorWave contract finally gives it something it has lacked: a paying tenant and a number Wall Street can model.
