Markets··6 min read

Fermi Signed $6.5 Billion of Rent for a Data Center That Does Not Exist Yet

Price · 12MYahoo Finance ↗

Fermi executed its first binding customer lease at Project Matador in Carson County, Texas. TensorWave takes a facility supported by 222 megawatts of total facility power. The lease is expected to generate about $6.5 billion of revenue over an initial 15-year term, with expansion rights that would take the partnership above 650 megawatts.

Delivery is phased and begins in the second half of 2027. The stock closed up 21.09% at $7.12.

The lease

TermValue
Facility power222 MW
Initial term15 years
Expected revenue~$6.5B
Expansion rightsto 650+ MW
First deliveryH2 2027
SiteProject Matador, Carson County, Texas
End usetens of thousands of AMD Instinct GPUs

Why this is a different animal from a hyperscaler lease

Riot leased power it already owns and operates. Fermi leased power it still has to build, on a campus that is largely a plan, to a tenant that is itself a young GPU cloud rather than a trillion-dollar balance sheet.

Every one of those differences matters to the discount you should apply. A binding 15-year lease from TensorWave is a real asset — but the credit behind it is a company whose own revenue depends on AI training demand holding up through 2028. You are underwriting two businesses, not one.

The word doing the work in the announcement is binding. It converts Fermi from a developer with a land position into a developer with an anchor tenant, and anchor tenants are what banks lend against. That, not the $6.5 billion, is why the stock closed up 21.09% at $7.12.

The number to hold onto

$6.5 billion over 15 years is roughly $430 million a year of rent, arriving from 2028 onward, on a facility that has to be financed and built first.

Compare that to the cost side. Campuses at this density run into billions of dollars of capital before first revenue, and the gap between signing and rent commencement is where developers die. Fermi has now done the easy half — finding demand. The hard half is funding two years of construction against a contract that pays later.

The AMD Instinct detail is worth noting for a second reason. It confirms that the non-Nvidia AI stack has enough committed demand behind it to justify a purpose-built campus. That is a data point about the compute market, not just about this stock.

How I read it

Two AI leases landed in as many days — Riot with Anthropic, Fermi with TensorWave. Together they say the same thing: power with an interconnect is the scarce asset, and whoever holds it can sell fifteen and twenty year contracts to counterparties who cannot wait.

Fermi is the higher-beta way to own that idea. The lease de-risks demand and leaves financing risk fully intact, which is why I would size it as a speculative position rather than an infrastructure holding.

What I want to see next: the funding package. A construction facility priced against this lease, disclosed with terms, would tell you more about the value of the contract than the contract did. If the next announcement is another lease rather than a financing, that is a tell.

Frequently asked questions

What did Fermi announce?
Its first binding customer lease at the Project Matador campus in Carson County, Texas. TensorWave takes a facility supported by 222 megawatts of total facility power, generating roughly $6.5 billion of revenue over an initial 15-year term.
When is the capacity delivered?
In phases, beginning in the second half of 2027. Nothing in the contract pays rent before then.
Can the deal get bigger?
Yes. The lease carries expansion rights for two additional data centers that would bring the partnership above 650 megawatts in total.
What is the main risk in FRMI?
Financing and delivery. Fermi has to build a campus of this scale before rent begins, and the announcement changes the shape of that risk rather than removing it.

Ruslan Averin is an independent investor and market analyst, author of averin.com, publishing market research since 2014.

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Ruslan AverinInvestor & Market Analyst

Writes on capital allocation, risk, and market structure.