Fermi’s share price tumbled on Friday after it revealed that the first tenant at its planned 11GW data center campus in Texas had pulled out of an agreement worth an initial $150 million.

The value of the company’s stock fell as much as 46 percent following the announcement, though it had recovered slightly by Monday morning.

In September, Fermi announced it had signed a non-binding letter of intent (LOI) with an unnamed “investment grade-rated tenant” to be the first customer at its data center and energy campus, known as Project Matador.

It was anticipated that this company, likely to be one of the cloud hyperscalers or AI companies, would provide $150 million in funding to help with the project’s massive building costs.

But Friday’s statement said that the exclusivity period detailed in the LOI had now expired, and that the potential tenant had terminated the agreement, though it remains in discussion over some of sort of lease for data center space at the campus.

Subsequently, Fermi has “commenced discussions with several other potential tenants for power delivery at the Project Matador Site in 2026,” the statement said.

It added: “The company remains confident that it will be able to meet its expected power delivery schedule at Project Matador as the demand for behind-the-meter power for AI remains robust over the near and long term.”

Speaking to the FT, Derek Soderberg, clean energy research analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, said the deal had stalled because of a disagreement over pricing.

“What we learned is that [Fermi] is a company with pricing discipline,” said Soderberg. “They don’t want to give up anything on pricing because it’s set a bad precedent for future gigawatts.”

Fermi, a company co-founded by former Texas governor and energy secretary Rick Perry, is planning to develop a massive 11GW data center and energy campus near Amarillo in Texas on land owned by the Texas Tech University system. If realized, Project Matador will span 18 million sq ft (1.67 million sqm) and would utilize a combination of on-site energy sources, including natural gas, solar, wind energy, and nuclear energy.

Despite having no data centers in operation, and little experience of the sector within its executive team, the company raised $682 million in an October IPO that valued the business at $15 billion.

And while $150 million is undoubtedly quite a lot of money, it is a drop in the ocean compared to the amount Fermi says it needs to get the project off the ground. The first two phases of Project Matador, which would involve the construction of an initial 1.1GW of data center capacity, are expected to cost $2 billion.

It is thought that controversial big data and surveillance tech firm Palantir is being lined up as a potential tenant at the campus.