Compute & Cloud
Fermi names new CEO three months after ousting co-founder
AI nuclear power firm Fermi has hired Lee McIntire as CEO, more than three months after firing co-founder Toby Neugebauer, as it lands its first customer lease.
Fermi, the AI nuclear power firm, named a new CEO on Wednesday, more than three months after firing co-founder Toby Neugebauer from the top executive post. The company hired Lee McIntire, an independent member of its board who has previously held chief executive positions at CH2M Hill and at TerraPower, the nuclear power startup founded by Bill Gates.
Fermi America, co-founded by former U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, is developing an AI campus in Amarillo, Texas, called Project Matador, which will eventually use nuclear reactors to power data centers. Wednesday’s announcement, together with Monday’s news that Fermi had signed TensorWave as its first binding customer lease for the Project Matador campus, gave the company’s stock a welcome boost — it’s up nearly 23% since Monday.
The young company took a hit in April when Neugebauer and CFO Miles Everson were pushed out. At the time, Fermi described the executive shakeup, along with other plans including a new corporate headquarters in Dallas, as “Fermi 2.0.”
“Fermi’s next chapter is a construction and power delivery story, and we believe Lee is the ideal executive to lead Fermi through that process,” Marius Haas, Fermi’s chairman of the board, said in a statement. “The job now is to build on schedule, on budget, and safely. Lee has spent 40 years delivering exactly this kind of large, complex project. He also knows Fermi from the inside, having served on our board through our latest period of growth, and he brings a reputation for integrity that Fermi’s customers, employees, regulators, and neighbors can rely on.”
Why it matters
Landing a construction-industry veteran as CEO right as it signs its first binding customer lease suggests Fermi’s board sees its next challenge as an execution problem — building gigawatt-scale nuclear-powered data centers on schedule — rather than a fundraising or strategy one.