One tenant out, a bigger one on the way in. Fermi America said on 12 November, together with its third-quarter results, that an investment-grade hyperscaler it does not name has signed agreements for an initial 600 MW at Project Matador in the Texas Panhandle, beginning in 2027. In the same release the Dallas company confirmed that the lease with TensorWave, signed in August, has been terminated, and with it the AMD credit support that was meant to back it.
Money Before The Lease
What the customer has signed is not yet a lease. According to Fermi there is a $200 million prepayment agreement and a $15 million agreement for early construction and site development, so that work on the ground can start as soon as possible. A third agreement, worth $90 million, for structural steel and building materials is still being finalised; it would let the customer take over long-lead material that Fermi bought in advance. The definitive long-term lease is still under negotiation.
Investing.com, carrying a Reuters-based report, gives the same figures. Fermi gives no reason for the end of the TensorWave contract and no financial effect. In October the AMD guaranty for that 222 MW first phase was presented as the step towards project financing; a month later both are off the table, and the new customer is almost three times larger.
The Quarter In Figures
- Net loss of $141.6 million, or $0.22 per share, against $346.8 million a year earlier; the company has no revenue yet.
- $133.4 million invested in plant and equipment in the quarter and $759.5 million in nine months; net property, plant and equipment of about $1.67 billion.
- Cash and restricted cash of $315.5 million, down from $408.5 million at the end of 2025, while net debt rose to $958.4 million from $109.8 million.
Fermi's chief executive puts the site's current capacity at 2.2 GW. The longer plan stays as before: a behind-the-meter campus on a private grid with combined-cycle gas, a nuclear complex, grid power, solar and batteries, growing in steps the filing describes as about 6, 11 and 17 GW, each subject to customers, permits, financing and interconnection. The release names no turbine, engine or supplier and gives no split of the 600 MW by source. Among the risks it lists are permits from the NRC and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, grid constraints, and the availability of gas and water. The land lease with the Texas Tech University System still has conditions to meet before vertical construction can start.
2027 Is Close For A Private Grid
A customer who pays $200 million before signing a lease is paying for time. The steel agreement says the same: the materials with long delivery times are the ones that decide whether a campus is energised on schedule, and that applies even more to the generating plant than to the buildings. On a site power plant without a utility behind it, the first 600 MW has to come with its own reserve, its own switchgear and its own cooling, all commissioned before the first data hall goes live.
Water is the item we would watch in the Panhandle. Fermi names it as a risk itself, and the choice between wet and air-cooled heat rejection for both the generation and the data center halls follows from it. That choice is hard to change once the long-lead orders are placed.
