Fermi America has successfully closed a $431.25 million senior convertible note offering to finance the development of Project Matador, the private energy campus the company is building in the Texas Panhandle. The transaction, limited to qualified institutional buyers, confirms that capital markets are paying close attention to projects that bring together nuclear power, natural gas and artificial intelligence.
The notes carry a 5.00% annual coupon and mature in July 2031. The initial offering was set at $350 million, later increased to $375 million before closing at $431.25 million following full exercise of the initial purchasers’ option for an additional $56.25 million. The conversion price was set at approximately $9.52 per share, with anti-dilution protection through capped call transactions that push the effective threshold to $14.64 per share — double the closing price on July 9. Net proceeds of approximately $416.81 million, after fees and expenses, will be partially allocated to fund these hedging instruments, with the remainder earmarked for general corporate purposes.
Project Matador is at the heart of Fermi America’s strategy. The multi-phase campus spans roughly 7,500 acres in Carson County, Texas, and is designed to deliver up to 17 gigawatts of private, off-grid power to hyperscaler customers in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. The project will feature what the company describes as the largest private nuclear complex in the United States, alongside the country’s largest combined-cycle gas plant, plus solar generation and battery storage. The nuclear component targets the installation of four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, with construction of the first unit expected to begin by 2026 and power generation targeted for 2032.
On the industrial partnership front, Fermi America has already signed agreements with Hyundai Engineering & Construction for the design and construction of the nuclear component, and with Doosan Enerbility — one of the world’s leading suppliers of nuclear plant components — for long-term collaboration across multiple technology areas. Siemens Energy is also part of the supply chain, contracted to deliver three F-class gas turbines for the campus’s first phase. MUFG has committed $500 million, contingent on the commissioning of the first 2.3 gigawatts of gas capacity, a milestone Fermi expects to reach in 2026. The revenue model relies on long-term lease agreements with hyperscaler tenants, structured around allocated power capacity rather than floor space.
Energy demand from AI data centers is one of the defining infrastructure challenges of this decade. According to a 2025 McKinsey study, the combined effect of data center expansion, reshoring of manufacturing and broad electrification has reversed nearly two decades of flat electricity demand in the United States, with annual load growth above 3% projected through 2040. Fermi’s behind-the-meter model — generating and consuming power on the same campus without relying on the transmission grid — directly addresses these bottlenecks. If Project Matador reaches operational status on schedule, it will demonstrate that nuclear energy can once again serve as the backbone of major private energy infrastructure, opening a path that other developers, in the US and beyond, may find easier to follow — both regulatorily and financially — than anything attempted so far.
