Investment analysis by Ruslan Averin — originally published at averin.com.
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
| Term | Value |
|---|---|
| Facility power | 222 MW |
| Initial term | 15 years |
| Expected revenue | ~$6.5B |
| Expansion rights | to 650+ MW |
| First delivery | H2 2027 |
| Site | Project Matador, Carson County, Texas |
| End use | tens 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.
More market analysis by Ruslan Averin at averin.com.
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