{"id":4499,"date":"2026-04-22T02:30:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T02:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/?p=4499"},"modified":"2026-04-22T02:30:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T02:30:18","slug":"feud-between-ai-power-startup-fermi-and-fired-ceo-and-top-shareholder-heats-up-over-proposed-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/?p=4499","title":{"rendered":"Feud between AI power startup Fermi and fired CEO and top shareholder heats up over proposed sale"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The new leadership of the AI power startup Fermi is feuding with its fired CEO and top shareholder over a potential sale of the company.<\/p>\n

The struggling Texas company, which went public last year at a nearly $20 billion market cap, aspires to build the largest data center campus in the world, called Project Matador, in the Texas Panhandle, but it has struggled to nail down anchor tenants. Fermi is now advising against recommendations from its fired co-founder and CEO to sell the company.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s market cap has plunged to less than $3.2 billion as of April 21.<\/p>\n

The former CEO, Toby Neugebauer, who\u2019s the top Fermi shareholder, said he was fired \u201cwithout cause\u201d last week and now supports an immediate process to sell the company in order to make \u201cmoney for all shareholders.\u201d Neugebauer said his family and former executive allies own about 40% of Fermi shares. Neugebauer and former chief financial officer Miles Everson, who abruptly resigned April 20, remain Fermi board members. Also still sitting on the seven-person board is Fermi backer and Neugebauer\u2019s longtime friend, Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and U.S. energy secretary.<\/p>\n

Since Neugebauer\u2019s and Everson\u2019s departures were announced, Fermi said April 21 that its \u201c2.0\u201d version \u201chas received significant and positive feedback from multiple potential tenants\u201d and partners. The majority four members of the Fermi board are presumably leading the charge, led by chairman Marius Haas, founding partner of the BayPine private equity firm and a veteran of Dell Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, and Intel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven recent changes in leadership, which position the company for its next chapter of growth and evolution from a startup to a scaled enterprise, the company firmly believes a sale is not in the best interest of its continued momentum on Project Matador, ability to serve potential tenants, and long-term value creation for shareholders,\u201d Fermi said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Fermi said it will review \u201call avenues to maximize shareholder value, which include continued execution of its business plan, strategic investments from third parties, joint ventures, or other transactions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fermi\u2019s \u201cProject Matador\u201d plans are to build 11 gigawatts\u2014enough to power 8 million homes\u2014of nuclear, solar, and natural-gas fired power for a \u201cHyperGrid\u201d to support massive data center complexes on over 5,000 acres of land owned mostly by the Texas Tech University System. Much of the land is leased to the U.S. Department of Energy, which has publicly supported Fermi\u2019s development.<\/p>\n

Fermi said a new \u201coffice of the CEO\u201d will lead the company while search firm Heidrick & Struggles helps identify a new CEO. The firm will work closely with Haas and two other board members\u2014excluding Perry, Neugebauer, and Everson\u2014to pick a CEO.<\/p>\n

The interim office of the CEO will be led by Fermi chief operating officer Jacobo Ortiz and Anna Bofa, who is an observer on the board, and has industry experience with Google and Meta.<\/p>\n

In December, an unnamed Fermi tenant canceled a $150 million deal for the data center campus. Fermi had planned to secure an anchor tenant by March, which has yet to occur.<\/p>\n

The news also follows reporting by Politico in March that Neugebauer and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick publicly clashed at the\u00a0Nvidia\u00a0GTC conference in San Jose.<\/p>\n

Neugebauer reportedly complained to Lutnick about plans for U.S. trade deals with South Korea and the blocking\u2014or slow-playing\u2014of direct Korean investments in Fermi\u2019s project. Fermi already is partnered with South Korea\u2019s Doosan Enerbility and\u00a0Hyundai\u00a0Engineering & Construction on the development of its nuclear reactors.<\/p>\n

At the time, Neugebauer denied being \u201cloud and belligerent\u201d and admitted only to having a \u201cdirect conversation\u201d with Lutnick about perceived interference in Fermi\u2019s progress, according to Politico.<\/p>\n

Unrelated to Fermi, Neugebauer also has an ongoing legal feud with prominent billionaires Peter Thiel and Ken Griffin over his failed \u201canti-woke\u201d banking business, GloriFi. Citadel\u2019s Griffin, Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal and\u00a0Palantir Technologies, and other prominent names were significant financial backers of GloriFi.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0previously reported that GloriFi suffered from a chaotic work environment, highlighted by allegedly erratic behavior from Neugebauer.<\/p>\n

Neugebauer, who is best known for cofounding the energy-focused private equity firm Quantum Energy Partners, now Quantum Capital Group, shut GloriFi down in 2022 when it ran out of money. The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in early 2023.<\/p>\n

#Feud #power #startup #Fermi #fired #CEO #top #shareholder #heats #proposed #sale<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new leadership of the AI power startup Fermi is feuding with its fired CEO…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[585,877,9371,702,7192,9514,4736,668,1468,299,5814,2127,187],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}