Rick Perry-Founded Energy REIT Clocks $683M IPO, Shares Surge
Fermi, the energy REIT co-founded by former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Toby Neugebauer of Quantum Energy Partners, raised $682.5M on its first day on the stock market.
Shares of the Amarillo, Texas-based company rose 55% from an initial public offering price of $21 to close at $32.53 on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported.
Fermi's performance is an indication of investors' eagerness to get in on opportunities connected to artificial intelligence and data centers.
Fermi is in its infancy, having just launched in January. Since then, it hasn't generated any revenue and doesn't expect to within the next year. It reported a roughly $6.4M loss in its first six months, according to Reuters.
Fermi is planning to develop a nearly 6,000-acre data center and power generation campus outside of Amarillo. Called Project Matador, it aims to be the world’s largest hybrid energy and data infrastructure campus.
The demand for power is based on the anticipation of data centers and AI needing much more than they already use. Providers of cloud computing and data management services, also called hyperscalers, such as Meta and Microsoft have gone so far as to explore nuclear power sources in their search to meet projected needs.
