Fermi, the troubled data-center and power startup co-founded by former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, is hoping to turn a corner after landing its first customer and naming a new chief executive.
The company, which went public in a splashy IPO last year, has spent recent months in a legal and shareholder tussle with its former CEO, while racing to sign a first customer for its sprawling Texas data-center and energy campus.
AI cloud provider TensorWave agreed to a lease at the campus, which will have a grid connection but plans huge on-site power plants to directly feed data centers filled with rows of servers running AI workloads for tech companies.
The site, which Fermi calls Project Matador, is on former grazing land owned by the Texas Tech University System and covers an area more than half the size of Manhattan.
"Fermi signs a lease!" analysts at Mizuho Americas wrote, calling it "a long-awaited catalyst" for the company.
The company also named board member Lee McIntire as chief executive this week. He previously served as CEO at engineering firm CH2M Hill and nuclear power startup TerraPower.
"Fermi is in a much stronger place" than it was three months ago, Chairman Marius Haas told analysts Thursday after the company reported second-quarter results.
The startup has yet to book any revenue and said its net loss for the most recent quarter widened to $25.8 million. The company hopes that will change and says its deal with TensorWave for 222 megawatts of power will bring in about $6.5 billion in revenue over 15 years.
Fermi's co-founders include Perry and energy billionaire Toby Neugebauer. They launched the company last year and took it public with audacious plans to build four big nuclear reactors and a slew of other power generation, largely natural gas, to power the AI boom.
Tensions soon rose. Fermi ousted Neugebauer as CEO in April, leading to legal fights and a call by the executive, who is also a major shareholder, for changes that included selling Fermi, an idea the company opposed.
"My wife, Melissa, and I have not sold a single [Fermi] share since the IPO," Neugebauer said in a statement Thursday. "Given the last 100 days' performance, we continue to believe that Fermi is grossly undervalued and reiterate our call for a strategic, full-value dual process and governance review."
Fermi was valued at roughly $19 billion upon its public debut in October, but its market value has since dropped under $5 billion. The stock popped earlier this week following the deal with TensorWave and then gave up much of those gains Thursday.
Fermi also said Hillcore Energy Capital will build, own and operate 2.6 gigawatts of power generation -- mostly natural gas with some solar and battery storage -- at Project Matador. Fermi wouldn't be required to commit money or issue debt to build the plant but would have the option to buy it in a decade. Hillcore is owned by Canadian investment firm Hillcore Group and industrial contractor JV Driver Group.
Between Hillcore and Fermi's own construction at the site, the company projects Project Matador could have 4.8 gigawatts of power within about 30 months. Eventually, it hopes that will grow to 17 gigawatts, an amount of power generation greater than what some states require.
Fermi's plans center on building an enormous amount of on-site power generation. "Bring Your Own Power," or BYOP, has become a growing trend during the race to build data centers for AI, which consume unprecedented amounts of electricity.
Supply-chain backlogs, permitting fights and availability of power supplies are among the issues that have caused the construction of data centers to fall behind targeted timelines this year.
Haas said Thursday that Fermi is in a position to take advantage of the logjam.
"The core question now is, 'How fast can you deliver power in 27?'" he said. Potential customers are running into roadblocks in other locations, he added. "So they're now all knocking on the door, coming and having the conversations with the team."