Fermi signs AMD credit support for first 222MW at Project Matador

Fermi has signed a credit support agreement with AMD for the first data center at its Project Matador campus in Carson County, Texas, Data Center Dynamics reported. The agreement covers the first 222MW of IT capacity, with AMD acting as guarantor while Fermi seeks financing for the initial build-out.

TensorWave is the customer of record at Matador, and AMD is its GPU vendor. Thousands of AMD Instinct chips are slated to run AI training and inference workloads there, according to DCD, making the guarantee one from the equipment supplier rather than the tenant.

Fermi's August deal with TensorWave covers up to 650MW of space at Matador, with the first 222MW expected online in the second half of 2027. Fermi expects that contract to be worth up to $6.5 billion over 15 years. Both figures are ceilings; their ratio works out to roughly $667,000 per MW per year, an implied figure rather than a disclosed rate.

Fermi signed a second agreement with AMD alongside the credit support, outlining a partnership and a framework for future expansion of up to 650MW of gross power capacity. "Our strategic partnership establishes a framework for phases two and three," said Lee McIntire, Fermi's CEO. "We have the land, the permits, the water, the power equipment, and the fiber network that give us distinct performance advantages."

At full build-out, Project Matador could offer 17GW of data center space and an adjoining energy campus on land near Amarillo owned by the Texas Tech University system. The site could span 18 million sq ft (1.67 million sqm) and is intended to use a combination of on-site energy sources, including natural gas, solar, wind and nuclear. The 650MW expansion framework covers less than 4% of the 17GW potential, on DCD's figures.

"Our collaboration with Fermi is an important step in expanding the infrastructure capacity needed to bring next-generation AI solutions to market," said Mathew Hein, AMD's senior vice president and chief strategy officer of corporate development. He said the two companies are enabling customers to deploy AMD-powered AI infrastructure at scale.

In September this publication reported that Governor Greg Abbott's August halt on data center permits made community and ratepayer support part of project diligence and left 49.8GW of Texas projects waiting on a December audit deadline.

The first data center at Matador is due to be delivered next year, according to DCD.