Fermi Names Lee McIntire CEO, Ending Three-Month Leadership Vacuum
Fermi Inc. (FRMI.O), the advanced energy and hyperscale development company building nuclear-powered AI infrastructure in Texas, appointed Lee McIntire as chief executive officer effective August 11, 2026. The announcement fills a leadership vacancy created more than three months earlier when the company terminated co-founder and CEO Toby Neugebauer on April 30, 2026. TechCrunch
McIntire, 74, brings over 45 years of executive leadership and corporate governance experience to the role. He was already serving as an independent member of Fermi's board before the appointment. His prior chief executive tenures include CH2M Hill, the global engineering and construction firm, and TerraPower, the advanced nuclear reactor startup founded by Bill Gates. TechCrunch That dual background in large-scale engineering delivery and next-generation nuclear technology maps directly onto Fermi's current operational phase.
Board chairman Marius Haas described McIntire as the ideal executive to lead Fermi through its construction and power-delivery phase. TechCrunch The language is deliberate. Fermi's core proposition, Project Matador, is an AI campus in Amarillo, Texas, designed to use nuclear reactors to power data centers. Moving from financing and corporate structuring into physical construction and actual power generation requires a different executive skill set than the one that built the company.
The leadership transition has not been orderly. In April 2026, Fermi pushed out both Neugebauer and CFO Miles Everson, packaging the shakeup alongside plans for a new corporate headquarters in Dallas under the label "Fermi 2.0." TechCrunch PR Newswire Neugebauer remained on the board of directors after his removal as CEO, a governance arrangement that created an obvious tension between the company's founding leadership and the new operational direction. SEC Filing Subsequently, a $375 million convertible note offering preceded Everson's resignation from the board entirely. PR Newswire
The market has responded to the leadership stabilization and commercial progress. Fermi's stock rose nearly 23 percent since Monday, August 10, 2026, when the company announced its first binding customer lease for the Project Matador campus with TensorWave, an AI compute provider. TechCrunch The TensorWave deal, signed before McIntire's CEO appointment was public but within the window of his board tenure, gives Project Matador its first committed tenant and a revenue anchor for the campus model.
The broader context here matters. Fermi America was co-founded by former U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and its Amarillo campus sits at the intersection of two converging pressures: the surging power demands of hyperscale AI compute and the renewed interest in nuclear generation as a dispatchable, low-carbon baseload source. Data center operators face power-constrained grids in major markets like Northern Virginia and Texas, and nuclear — whether traditional fission, small modular reactors, or advanced reactor designs — has become a serious planning option rather than a thought experiment. Fermi's model of co-locating AI compute with dedicated nuclear generation bypasses grid interconnection queues entirely, at least in principle.
Worth flagging is the governance risk embedded in this appointment cycle. A company that fired its co-founder CEO, watched its CFO depart the board after a convertible raise, and then sat without a chief executive for over three months while pursuing a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure project is not an organization operating with calm institutional continuity. McIntire's credentials are strong on paper. But executing Project Matador will require navigating Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing, construction risk, reactor deployment timelines, and customer delivery commitments simultaneously. The gap between announcing a binding lease and delivering nuclear-powered compute is measured in years, not quarters.
That said, the pieces are now in place for a credible attempt. Fermi has a named CEO with nuclear and large-project delivery experience, a board chairman framing the mandate around construction execution, a first customer under contract, and a stock market responding positively. Whether McIntire can convert that position into megawatts on the grid at Project Matador will define Fermi's trajectory from here.
