Fermi America Moves to Expand Project Matador to 17GW, Cementing World’s Largest Private Grid Campus

New updates have been reported about Fermi America.

Fermi America plans to file a new 5GW Clean Air Permit with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality within weeks, accelerating the build-out of its Project Matador private power campus in the Texas Panhandle. The filing follows approval of the site’s first 6GW Clean Air Permit two weeks ago and underpins a target of roughly 17GW of total campus capacity, anchored by 11GW of clean natural gas and supplemented by nuclear, solar, battery storage, and utility grid power.

Positioned as a dedicated power hub for hyperscalers and advanced compute users, Fermi America already controls more than 2GW of long lead-time natural gas generation assets and has secured equipment finance, giving the company a defined path to scale. Co-founder and CEO Toby Neugebauer framed the expansion as a direct response to U.S. grid constraints, winter reliability issues, and surging AI-driven electricity demand, arguing that private power grids are better suited to deliver capacity at speed and shield ratepayers from large public-grid upgrades.

In partnership with the Texas Tech University System, Fermi America is also emphasizing the regional economic upside, citing expectations for additional high-wage construction roles and permanent technical and operations jobs in the Amarillo area. The company’s strategy aligns with emerging policy signals such as President Trump’s “Bring Your Own Power” and Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which encourage large electricity users to secure dedicated supply rather than rely on legacy public infrastructure.

If fully executed, Project Matador would become the world’s largest next-generation private grid campus, providing what the company describes as “power certainty at scale” to data centers, AI clusters, and other compute-intensive customers. Management highlights a multi-source energy mix, including planned advanced nuclear units, as a way to balance reliability, carbon intensity, and cost for corporate buyers seeking long-term energy contracts.

For Fermi America, the additional permit request represents a step-change in its growth trajectory, expanding from an initial 6GW natural gas-centric configuration toward an integrated 17GW platform capable of serving multiple hyperscalers on a single site. While the company cautions that forward-looking statements are subject to regulatory, financing, and execution risks, the current permitting momentum and asset base position it as an early-scale player in the emerging market for private, AI-focused power infrastructure.