Fermy America describes itself as an “advanced energy and hyperscaler development company purpose-built for the AI era.” Founded in Amarillo, Texas, in January 2025, it went public less than a year later at a staggering valuation of roughly $15 billion despite having no revenue, no operating assets, and virtually no operating history. Its central promise is Project Matador, a vast AI-focused energy complex that Fermy claims will eventually generate 11 gigawatts of electricity, selling that power to third-party AI data center operators. The scale of the proposal is breathtaking, but so too are the gaps between ambition and reality.
The company was co-founded by Rick Perry and Toby Newbower. Perry is a well-known political figure, having served as governor of Texas and later as U.S. Secretary of Energy during Donald Trump’s first term. His presence gives Fermy instant name recognition and political symbolism. Newbower, who serves as CEO, is an entrepreneur and political donor with a record of backing conservative causes. In 2022, he founded GloriFi, an “anti-woke” digital bank aimed at conservative consumers. Backed by tens of millions of dollars from high-profile conservative investors and promoted by figures such as Candace Owens, GloriFi collapsed in less than two months. According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, the venture was plagued by internal dysfunction, allegations of volatile behavior by Newbower, and an operational setup that included running the company from his personal home.
Despite this history, Newbower and Perry joined forces to launch Fermy, framing it as a solution to what they argue is an imminent power crisis driven by AI. Project Matador, to be built on a 5,200-acre leased site near Amarillo, is presented as the answer: a massive energy hub combining natural gas, nuclear, and some solar generation. Fermy does not plan to operate data centers itself. Instead, it intends to sell electricity directly to hyperscalers and data center developers who would build adjacent facilities and plug into Fermy’s power plants.
On paper, the numbers are extraordinary. Fermy claims it will generate one gigawatt of power as early as 2026 and ramp up to 11 gigawatts by 2038. To put that in perspective, 11 gigawatts exceeds the total electricity generation of several small, developed countries with national-scale power grids, including Iceland and Uruguay. By 2038, Fermy projects roughly six gigawatts of nuclear capacity and nearly five gigawatts of natural gas generation. These figures alone should invite skepticism, but the timelines make the proposal even harder to believe.
Building large-scale power infrastructure in the United States is a slow, capital-intensive, and heavily regulated process. Even in energy-friendly states, permitting for a new greenfield natural gas plant typically takes well over a year, followed by two to four years of construction. The idea that Fermy could permit, build, and commission a 500-megawatt gas plant within a single year strains credibility. Nuclear power raises the bar even higher. The most recent nuclear reactors completed in the U.S., Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia, took roughly 15 years to build and cost around $26 billion, and that was on an existing nuclear site with decades of operating history. Together, they produce about 2.2 gigawatts of power. Fermy is proposing to build nearly three times that capacity, on a greenfield site, with no prior experience in nuclear construction.
Experience is a recurring issue. As of mid-2025, Fermy reportedly had a single employee: CEO Toby Newbower. Rick Perry, despite being a co-founder, is not an employee and plays no operational role, serving only as a director. His contribution appears to be symbolic rather than managerial. Nevertheless, Fermy’s marketing materials lean heavily on Perry’s past role in government and on visual and rhetorical associations with Donald Trump.
The company’s promotional strategy is perhaps its most controversial aspect. Fermy’s videos prominently feature clips of President Trump discussing AI and the need for increased power generation, intercut with AI-generated renderings of Project Matador. While Trump has made general statements about energy and AI, there is no evidence of any formal relationship between him and Fermy. Trump has not endorsed the company, does not sit on its board, does not own equity in it, and has never publicly commented on Project Matador. Yet Fermy’s presentation risks giving viewers the impression of presidential backing. At one point, the company even referred to Project Matador as the “Donald J. Trump Generating Plant,” a move that critics argue crosses from aggressive marketing into outright misrepresentation.
Visually, Fermy’s promotional materials blur the line between reality and fiction. Real footage of limited site preparation is mixed with AI-generated scenes of massive construction convoys and bustling industrial activity. The synthetic clips are often subtly flawed, with distorted vehicle shapes, nonsensical logos, and even moving vehicles without drivers. To an untrained or overly optimistic eye, however, the impression is one of rapid progress. In reality, on-the-ground reporting suggests Project Matador remains little more than an empty patch of land with minimal foundational work completed.
Despite all of this, Fermy’s October 2025 IPO was a success by conventional metrics. The company listed shares on both NASDAQ and the London Stock Exchange, selling 32.5 million shares at $21 each and raising approximately $680 million. Wall Street enthusiasm followed quickly. According to Bloomberg, eight investment banks initiated coverage within weeks, all with buy ratings. One particularly striking endorsement came from the Japanese investment bank Mizuho, which told clients, “We consider the management team well-rounded and execution-driven with deep expertise in power generation, nuclear build, and finance, plus political connections that could help accelerate development.”
That assessment raised eyebrows, particularly given Fermy’s lack of operating staff or construction track record. Much of the bullishness appeared to hinge on the assumption that Rick Perry’s prior relationship with Donald Trump would translate into regulatory favoritism. Yet the historical record complicates that narrative. Perry resigned as energy secretary in 2019 amid the fallout from Trump’s impeachment over the Ukraine phone call. Trump was later quoted as saying, “I didn’t even want to make the call. The only reason I made the call is because Rick asked me to.” The episode suggests that the relationship between the two men is, at best, strained, undermining the idea that Perry wields significant influence with a Trump administration.
Funding remains the company’s most immediate and existential challenge. While Fermy raised $680 million at IPO, building 11 gigawatts of power generation would require tens of billions of dollars. The company has said it plans to pursue up to $4 billion in project financing and to construct Project Matador in tranches through special purpose vehicles. This model depends heavily on securing long-term power purchase commitments from data center customers, which in turn would give banks the confidence to lend.
In November 2025, Fermy announced what it described as a $150 million “advanced and native construction agreement” with its first prospective client. The phrasing suggested a major breakthrough, but a closer look revealed that no money had actually changed hands. The agreement represented a potential future prepayment, not a binding transaction. In December, the illusion collapsed when Fermy disclosed in an SEC filing that the prospective customer had terminated the agreement. “On December 11th, 2025, the first tenant notified the company that it is terminating the advance in construction agreement,” the filing stated. With no customers and no committed prepayments, Fermy’s financing strategy unraveled almost overnight.
The market reaction was swift. On the day the termination was disclosed, Fermy’s share price fell by roughly one-third. Within three months of the IPO, the stock was down nearly 70 percent. What had been sold as a visionary AI-energy powerhouse began to look more like a case study in speculative excess.
Fermy America’s story is ultimately less about one company and more about the environment that allowed it to flourish, if only briefly. A pre-revenue firm with one employee, no construction experience, and a plan to build the largest energy project in the country managed to convince investors it was worth $15 billion. It did so by wrapping itself in two of the most powerful narratives of the era: AI and Trump. Whether Fermy survives in any form remains to be seen, but its rise and rapid stumble offer a stark reminder that hype, no matter how compelling, cannot indefinitely substitute for execution, capital, and credibility.
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