20260422 - Oh no! The Donald J. Trump data centre is in trouble

Hi, I'm David Gerrard and this is Pivot to AI, coming to you daily. Today, we've got the best and hugest data center right here. Maybe. 2025 was a hot, hot, hot time for data centers in the US. The Trump administration announced in May last year it would fast track nuclear power for AI. with AI, Vibe, Nuclear. Fermi America heard the call and they dived right in to fill this much-needed gap. Fermi was founded by former Texas Governor Rick Perry, his son Griffin Perry, and Toby Nugabauer as the CEO. Nugabauer has an illustrious corporate history. He made a bundle in private equity. Then in late 2021, Nugabauer got a pile of Republican investors, such as Peter Thiel, to put money into his anti-woke bank, glorify. For the people who look at the rabid capitalists of Wall Street and think they're too liberal. Culture war marketing is one thing. Making a bank work is a different thing. particularly when employees were telling the Wall Street Journal about Nuggerbauer's volatile temper and claimed he drank on the job. Glory Fie nearly went broke before it launched. In September 2022, it blew all the investors' cash and failed by November 2022. It got so bad, Nuggerbauer had to sell his mansion in Dallas, Texas, an imitation White House. Nuckebauer got together with Perry Sr and Jr in early 2025 In June Fermi launched with a big promise Quote a first of its kind behind the meter hyper grid campus that is expected to integrate the largest nuclear power complex in America, the nation's biggest combined cycle natural gas project, utility grid power, solar power, and battery energy storage to deliver next generation artificial intelligence, unquote. Nuclear, at the speed of hype. Huge, if true. The project would be called the President Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus, or Project Matador for short, it would generate a total 11 gigawatts of power, that's two New York cities, on a private grid just for the data centres. Fermi wanted to build four new 1 gigawatt nuclear reactors, the Donald J. Trump Generating Plant, units 1 to 4. It's not clear they got Trump's endorsement for the names. I am guessing they thought a little flattery couldn't hurt. Nugebauer told the Washington Post he could get the nuclear plants built by 2032, just seven years, which is quite ambitious. They were trying for an expedited approval process. By July, Fermi was working on its initial public offering on the stock market. Fermi went public on October 1st. Rick Perry told Reuters, quote, This is our modern day Manhattan Project, unquote. The IPO popped nicely. Fermi raised million for a valuation of billion That pretty good for a company that had never made a penny a revenue and only had a non letter of intent from one prospective tenant You might wonder if all this was happening in some sort of bubble. One thing Fermi didn't do was say who this tenant was, which is just as well because the tenant pulled out in December. Nugabauer told Business Insider the tenant had been Amazon, though Fermi later denied this. A Fermi TV ad in January 2026 brags about how they've laid down gas pipes, water pipes, and fences. So that's nice. It's a new year in America. Asking yourself what's possible in 2026? The better question is, what's impossible? Because with enough determination, tenacity, and the favour of an almighty God, the answer is nothing. So, all Fermi needs is... a miracle. Unfortunately, a miracle wasn't coming. Instead, last week, a report dropped from CleanView, who track renewable energy. Quote, Satellite images show the project is at least a year behind the schedule projected in its IPO filing. Unquote. In February, construction workers on the Fermi site were being laid off. Fermi said everything was progressing. But Clean View got satellite photos showing there was nothing much happening. In the fourth quarter 2025 earnings call, Miles Everson, the chief financial officer, admitted, fermented Fermi didn't have a tenant as such, but they were working hard on getting a tenant deal. In fact, they admitted they couldn't go forward unless they got a tenant deal. Fermi had blown that million and it was running out of money They admitted to shareholders they might have to sell some of the power plant gas turbines so they didn run out of liquid cash This news from Cleanview knocked the stock price even further down than it had fallen since the IPO. On Thursday, Nugebauer spoke to Axios. Quote Nugebauer told Axios he may have been naive about how complex these projects are to put together particularly the cooling systems that are essential to cool the AI chips Unquote Co-founder Griffin Perry dumped 15% of his shares while he could and on Friday Nugebauer quit as CEO Miles Everson, the CFO, quit on Sunday The press release calls the remaining C-suite Fermi 2.0. Even as Fermi didn't really make it to 1.0, they swear they're moving ahead with all the big plans, just as soon as they can find a tenant to pay for any of them. And in the meantime, it's the President Donald J. Trump advanced vacant lot. Thanks for tuning in to Pivot to AI. don't forget to send this episode to one other person spread the word about Pivot2AI hit like and subscribe on YouTube leave a nice review in your podcast app this helps a lot and you can keep Pivot2AI coming out daily with just $5 into the Patreon linked in the show notes thank you all I'll see you tomorrow and bye for now Thank you.