AMD is putting its own credit behind a customer’s data center. The chipmaker signed a credit support agreement with Fermi, the Nasdaq listed developer of Project Matador in Carson County, Texas, effectively guaranteeing Fermi as it raises financing to build the campus’s first data center. The first deployment covers 222MW of IT capacity, and the two companies also agreed a framework for expansion up to 650MW of gross power capacity.
The anchor tenant is AI cloud firm TensorWave, which agreed in August to take up to 650MW at the site, with the first 222MW expected online in the second half of 2027. Fermi expects that contract to be worth up to $6.5 billion over 15 years. AMD’s interest is direct: thousands of its Instinct GPUs are slated for the facility, and a credit guarantee helps ensure the building that houses them gets financed.
Fermi needs the help. The company, founded in January 2025 by former Texas governor and energy secretary Rick Perry and Toby Neugebauer, plans a campus that could reach 17GW at full build out on Texas Tech University system land near Amarillo, powered by a mix of gas, solar, wind and nuclear. Its first prospective investment grade tenant withdrew last year, triggering a class action lawsuit, its chief executive and chief financial officer have both departed in 2026, and its shares traded at $3.72 this week against a $25 first day valuation a year ago.
Vendor credit support of this kind is exactly the circularity regulators have started to name: the IMF’s stability report this week pointed to hyperscalers and chip firms investing in, lending to and selling to the same AI companies. AMD’s guarantee converts that pattern into a signed agreement, and it transfers part of Fermi’s construction risk onto AMD’s balance sheet if the project stalls.