Another crisis rocks Fermi as CEO and CFO walk, stocks plummet 22%

At one stage Fermi looked like the most audacious bet in the AI infrastructure boom. Backed by former US Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the company IPO’d on the Nasdaq in October 2025 at $21 a share, raising $746 million and briefly commanding a market capitalisation nudging $20 billion, all before generating a single dollar of revenue. On Monday, it closed at $5.40.

Co-founder and CEO Toby Neugebauer and CFO Miles Everson have both suddenly departed the AI nuclear power firm, sending shares down 22% on Monday. The sell-off pushed trading volume to more than 550% above Fermi’s three-month average, and the stock is now down roughly 78% since the IPO. Fermi’s market cap has fallen from nearly $20 billion in October to $3.4 billion.

The departures were announced within days of each other. Both men have moved into board seats rather than leaving the company entirely, a structure that will do little to reassure investors who have watched this story unravel through a succession of promises and setbacks.

The company said it is “in negotiations” with a candidate to serve as interim CFO and expects an announcement within the coming week. A newly created “Office of the CEO,” composed of Jacobo Ortiz Blanes, previously COO, and Anna Bofa, previously a board adviser, has been established to act as co-president and take on Neugebauer’s previous responsibilities.

Marius Haas, the lead independent board director and a veteran technology executive with previous roles at Compaq, HPE and Dell, has assumed the chairmanship. Search firm Heidrick & Struggles has been retained to identify a permanent CEO.

Project Matador: A megaproject without a tenant

At the heart of Fermi’s difficulties lies Project Matador (formally named the President Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus) a 5,800-acre site in the Texas Panhandle near Amarillo, designed to be the world’s largest AI data centre and energy complex, targeting 17 gigawatts of power from nuclear, natural gas, and solar.

The problem is that no hyperscaler has yet committed to leasing capacity, and the absence of an anchor tenant has become a structural crisis rather than a temporary stumble. In December, an unnamed Fermi tenant cancelled a $150 million deal for the data centre campus. Fermi had hoped to secure an anchor tenant by March, which has yet to occur.

Fermi reported a GAAP net loss of $486.4 million from its January 2025 inception through December 2025, with no revenue recognised during that period. The company holds approximately $408.5 million in cash, a number that will shrink with every month the campus sits idle.

The underlying tension is one the industry knows well: a chicken-and-egg deadlock between construction and tenants, made worse when the equity story runs ahead of the operational reality. Since Fermi is structured as a REIT that allocates income from tenants to shareholders, the delay may raise doubts about attracting other potential money-generating tenants, in a toxic feedback loop.

Neugebauer’s exit and the broader warning

The circumstances of Neugebauer’s departure carry details that will not encourage prospective tenants. The news follows reporting by Politico in March that Neugebauer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick publicly clashed at the Nvidia GTC conference in San Jose, where Neugebauer reportedly complained about plans for US trade deals with South Korea and what he described as the blocking of direct Korean investments in Fermi’s project. Neugebauer denied being “loud and belligerent” and admitted only to a “direct conversation” about perceived interference in Fermi’s progress.

In a candid admission to Axios, Neugebauer reportedly acknowledged that he may have “misunderstood where the supply chain is” for data centre cooling equipment, a confession that, coming from the founder of a project this size, will raise eyebrows across the industry.

The departures of the CEO and CFO, combined with the loss of the prospective tenant and the scale of reported losses, have intensified questions about how quickly the new leadership can stabilise operations and secure customers.

Adding to the pressure, the company also faces securities class-action lawsuits filed in January 2026 alleging misrepresentations about tenant demand and statements made around its IPO.

The company is pressing ahead with its rebranding as “Fermi 2.0,” moving its headquarters from Amarillo to Dallas in a bid to attract deeper talent, and adding new board members including Jeffrey Stein, an experienced corporate turnaround adviser. Whether that is enough to turn the tide will depend, ultimately, on one thing: finding a hyperscaler willing to sign on the dotted line. Until that happens, everything else is noise.

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