A Subpoena and an SEC Request Land on Fermi's 17 GW AI Power Campus

Fermi Inc. has disclosed a subpoena dated July 30, 2026 from the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York demanding documents tied to Project Matador and records associated with former management ^[1]. Four days later, on August 3, the SEC filed its own document request covering the same territory ^[2], and Fermi put both on the record in an SEC filing around August 14, 2026 ^[3] without specifying the full scope of either demand ^[4].

The asset under the microscope is the reason anyone cares. Project Matador is a plan to build one of the largest private energy campuses in the country, targeting up to 17 GW of capacity across roughly 8,400 acres leased from Texas Tech University ^[5], mixing natural gas and nuclear generation ^[6] dedicated to AI data center load ^[7]. About 6 GW has already been permitted ^[8], which is roughly 35 percent of the headline number ^[14], and the project has been accepted into an NRC environmental review pilot program ^[9]. Fermi listed in October 2025, raising approximately $746 million ^[10], so the legal demands land somewhere around nine to ten months after the IPO ^[15].

Against that, the company recently secured a binding lease with the AI cloud provider TensorWave that, according to cryptobriefing.com, is reportedly valued at $6.5 billion ^[11]. That single contract is roughly 8.7 times the money Fermi raised going public ^[16]. It is also the number most exposed to the rest of the docket. The founding CEO was ousted, triggering governance disputes ^[12]; tenant funding was terminated, raising questions about revenue projections ^[13]; and shareholders have filed a class action alleging misleading statements about tenant interest in Project Matador and about a canceled $150 million funding deal ^[17]. The SEC request is aimed at Project Matador and former management ^[2], which is the shape a regulator's file takes when the question is whether public disclosure matched internal reality.

Read this as a counterparty problem rather than a compliance story. The physical constraint on AI buildouts has moved from chips to interconnects and generation, and the entities promising multi-gigawatt campuses are mostly young, thinly capitalised, and selling contracts that dwarf their own balance sheets. A hyperscaler or GPU cloud signing a decade-long lease is underwriting a developer's ability to survive litigation, replace management, and keep permits moving in parallel. Permitted megawatts and a university land lease are tangible ^[5][8]. Governance that can carry a $6.5 billion obligation through a federal subpoena is the scarcer input ^[1][11].

For operators negotiating power now, the practical lesson is in the paperwork: milestone-based drawdowns, step-in rights, and disclosure covenants matter more than announced capacity. Fermi's own history shows how fast a funded tenant becomes an unfunded one ^[13].

What to watch: whether the SEC's document request escalates into a formal investigation, since Fermi has not disclosed the scope of either demand ^[4]; whether TensorWave holds to the binding lease or renegotiates as the litigation develops ^[11][17]; progress from the 6 GW already permitted toward the 17 GW target ^[8][5]; movement in the NRC pilot review ^[9]; and who ends up running the company after the ouster ^[12]. All of the above rests on a single account of Fermi's filing, so the filing itself is the document to read when it is available ^[3].