Fermi America's Project Matador in the Texas Panhandle has the backing it was waiting for. On 13 October the Dallas company announced a credit support agreement with AMD for the lease of the campus's first phase, 222 MW of gross power capacity in Carson County. The two companies also signed a partnership framework for phases two and three, with up to 650 MW of further gross capacity. Fermi calls the agreement a key milestone towards project financing; it is not the financing itself.
A Guaranty For The Tenant
The 222 MW is the lease Fermi announced on 10 August with TensorWave, an AI cloud provider. According to Yahoo Finance it is worth about $6.5 billion over an initial term of 15 years, and the site is meant to run tens of thousands of AMD Instinct GPUs. Closing the lease depended on a guaranty for part of TensorWave's obligations, and on 22 September the parties moved the closing date to 31 October. AMD's credit support is that guaranty, which gives lenders a tenant they can underwrite.
Fermi says it has invested more than $1.5 billion in the build-out so far. Chief executive Lee McIntire pointed to the land, permits, water, power equipment and fibre the company already holds; AMD's Mathew Hein, senior vice president and chief strategy officer of corporate development, called the collaboration an important step in adding the infrastructure next-generation AI needs. The risks named in Fermi's own release are the conditions attached to AMD's obligations, the closing of the TensorWave lease and whether project financing can be raised on acceptable terms. The shares closed 14.46 % higher at $3.72, according to The Motley Fool, after a fall of about 89 % since the 2025 listing; third-quarter results are due on 12 November.
Behind The Meter, At Any Scale
The power concept is what makes Matador unusual. Fermi delivers electricity behind the meter on a private grid built and operated on the site, and says the campus is to combine what it describes as the largest combined-cycle gas project in the country, a large new nuclear complex, utility grid power, solar and battery storage. It expects the project to grow to about 17 GW, subject to binding customer agreements, and to spend capital only as contracts come in. The release gives no rating or schedule for the gas plant or the reactors.
That last point is the one an engineer will notice. A first phase of 222 MW is modest beside a 17 GW plan, and it is the phase that has to be powered first, by whatever is on site when the tenant moves in. On a private grid there is no utility to lean on during commissioning, during a trip or on the hottest afternoon of a Panhandle summer; the generation, its spare capacity and its cooling decide the availability the lease promises. As with the dedicated gas plant behind Applied Digital in North Dakota, the financing story and the power plant story are the same story; the 31 October closing will show whether this one moves from paper to steel.
Sources: Fermi (press release), Yahoo Finance, The Motley Fool
