Because regular old West Texas wind and dust weren’t exciting enough, the Texas Tech University System decided to lease out 5,000 acres of land near Amarillo to a company called Fermi Inc. The goal? Project Matador, a sci-fi-scale AI data center that promises to consume gigawatts of power and—if we are all very lucky—might eventually include an actual, literal nuclear power plant right next door to the Pantex nuclear weapons facility. Because if there’s one thing West Texas needs, it’s more radioactive material and automated intelligence.
Naturally, before a single server could even boot up, the whole thing devolved into a spectacular corporate soap opera. Fermi recently fired its CEO, Toby Neugebauer, sparking a vicious, multi-million-dollar proxy war for control of the company. While Texas Tech administrators are drooling over promises of up to $30 million a year in rent and perks, the company’s stock has pulled a classic tech-bubble maneuver, cratering from a high of over $32 a share down to a pathetic sub-$6 per share.
The mudslinging between Fermi’s board and its ousted CEO is nothing short of majestic. Fermi’s current leadership claims Neugebauer is trying to force a fire sale of the company to cash out on his own pre-IPO shares (which he allegedly bought for less than a penny each) while public investors take a bath. They also formally accused him of getting into “loud and belligerent” public shouting matches with the U.S. Commerce Secretary and the global head of data center energy for Google.
Neugebauer, currently suing to claw his way back into power, fired back by claiming he’s just a misunderstood, hard-working guy who wakes up at 3:00 a.m. daily to micro-manage contractor attendance and stop people from overbilling. He insists those public screaming matches with international tech executives were just his aggressive way of “protecting the bottom line” for the good people of the Panhandle.
But hey, if the stock drops any lower, maybe Texas Tech can just buy the whole nuclear data center using a single semester’s worth of campus parking ticket revenue?
Source:
