The Trump-branded Fermi Mega AI Data Center project has stalled, with the CEO resigning and the first phase delayed by a year.

According to Dynamic Beating monitoring, on April 17, Toby Neugebauer, CEO of the U.S. AI data center company Fermi America, suddenly resigned, causing the stock price to drop again in after-hours trading, with a cumulative 75% decline in the past six months. Fermi America, co-founded by former Energy Secretary during Trump's first term, Rick Perry, went public in October last year. The company is developing what is claimed to be the world's largest AI data center project in the Texas Panhandle, officially named the "President Donald Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus." The project covers an area of about half of Manhattan, with a planned power capacity of 17 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to three times the electricity consumption of New York City. The power structure is mainly based on local natural gas, nuclear energy, and solar power.

The project is currently stuck at two points. First, it has not publicly secured an anchor tenant (usually a hyperscaler cloud provider). Second, the cooling system was supposed to be designed by the tenant, but without a tenant, this cannot be finalized. Neugebauer admitted on the March 30 earnings call that the supply chain was a "larger bottleneck than expected," telling Axios, "I may have misunderstood the supply chain, so this can be considered a failure." A report from the independent market intelligence company Cleanview estimates that even if an anchor tenant is signed this month, the first batch of buildings will not be operational until May 2027, about a year later than originally planned. Fermi recently confirmed in SEC filings that it cannot meet its original target of launching 1.1 GW by the end of 2026. Since a tenant withdrew in December last year, investors have filed a class-action lawsuit over this matter.

Internally, there are also signs of tension. Co-founder Griffin Perry (Rick Perry's son) disclosed on April 15 that he sold about 11 million shares, equivalent to 15% of his holdings. A Politico report in March stated that Neugebauer had a conflict with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at a meeting.