Fermi, a data center real estate investment trust (REIT) whose founding team includes former Texas governor and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, has filed for an initial public offering (IPO). Amarillo, Texas-based Fermi aims to raise up to $550 million by selling 25 million shares for $18 to $22 apiece.

• A real estate investment trust (REIT) is a company that operates income-generating real estate properties. REITs pool money from individual and institutional investors to buy and manage properties, and rental or leasing income accrues to investors.

• In the U.S., REITs are legally required to pay at least 90% of their income as dividends to shareholders. The steady dividends make REITs attractive for investors seeking regular income from their assets. 

Fermi operates in arguably the hottest real niche in the U.S. market: data centers leased to technology companies for running artificial intelligence (AI) systems. With the AI industry on a tear and data centers relatively scarce, companies are willing to pay top dollar to secure massive computational resources for training and deploying AI systems.

Texas-based Fermi was founded by Toby Neugebauer, who serves as chief executive, and Rick Perry, a board director at the company. 

• Neugebauer is best known for co-founding Quantum Energy Partners, an energy-focused private equity firm with $30 billion of assets under management. Quantum provides equity and debt funding for oil and gas projects as well as renewable energy plants. 

• Rick Perry is a career politician who served as governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015 and as U.S. Secretary of Energy from 2017 to 2019. 

Fermi’s flagship project is dubbed Project Matador, a planned mammoth data center to be powered by solar, natural gas, and nuclear energy. At up to 11 GW capacity, Project Matador will be the world’s largest data center complex if Fermi successfully translates its idea into reality. For reference, 11 GW of electricity input is enough to power 11 million homes or a small country. 

• The largest data center currently is China’s Inner Mongolia Information Park with 150 MW of capacity, or about 7% of Project Matador’s conceived capacity, highlighting the enormous ambition and challenges associated with putting it into fruition. 

• Fermi hopes to have Project Matador fully running by 2038. For now, it remains a development-stage company with no revenue. Fermi plans to list its shares on both the Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange under the “FRMI” symbol, the company’s S-1 filing indicates. 

Share this...

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Linkedin

Whatsapp

Email

Print