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Fermi and TensorWave Extend $6.5B Project Matador Data Center Lease Closing to October 31, 2026

By: IDCNOVARegion: North America
Fermi Inc. (NASDAQ: FRMI) (LSE: FRMI), operating as Fermi America, announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Fermi Campus 1 LLC, and TensorWave TEX1, LLC have signed a First Amendment to their Data Center Lease and Services Agreement, extending the closing date from September 30, 2026 to October 31, 2026. All other terms of the lease remain unchanged and in effect.

The lease, originally signed in August 2026, covers 222 megawatts of total facility power at Fermi's Project Matador campus in the Texas Panhandle and represents approximately $6.5 billion in expected total revenue over its initial 15-year term. The agreement's effectiveness is contingent upon the satisfaction or waiver of specified closing conditions, including the execution and delivery of related work letters and guaranties, finalization of operations schedules and a service-level agreement, receipt of Board approvals, and securing project-level financing sufficient to fund construction of the leased premises.

Fermi said it continues to negotiate a guaranty of certain lease obligations with an investment-grade counterparty. Both parties agreed to the extension to allow additional time to finalize the guaranty and complete the remaining closing conditions. The company described the extension as a reflection of both parties' continued commitment to the transaction and the constructive posture of all parties in the guaranty discussions.

"Both Fermi and TensorWave remain fully committed to this lease, and our decision to formally extend the closing date together reflects that," said Lee McIntire, Chief Executive Officer of Fermi. "Our remaining work is to finalize the lease guaranty with our counterparty. Those discussions are active, constructive and progressing, and we look forward to closing and delivering Project Matador's first data center for TensorWave."

Project Matador is being developed as one of the world's largest advanced energy and AI ecosystems, with more than $1.5 billion invested in buildout to date. The project is designed to address the single biggest constraint in AI infrastructure: access to large-scale, reliable power on a timeline that meets customer demand, delivered behind the meter and on a private grid built and operated on site. Subject to entering into binding customer agreements, the project is expected to ramp to approximately 17 gigawatts, with capital deployment matched to commercial commitments.

The extension underscores the growing complexity of financing and guaranteeing large-scale AI data center leases, where power procurement, infrastructure buildout, and investment-grade credit support must align before construction can proceed. For TensorWave, which operates one of the world's largest all-AMD GPU clouds powered exclusively by AMD Instinct Series GPUs, securing the Project Matador capacity is critical to meeting rapidly expanding demand for AI training and inference workloads. The outcome of the guaranty negotiations will be closely watched as a bellwether for how the industry structures risk-sharing arrangements in an era of gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure development.