Former Energy Secretary’s Startup Mints Three Billionaires Despite No Revenues

Forbes

Fermi America’s IPO on Wednesday catapulted the fortunes of multiple investors—including Rick Perry’s son and the son of a former GOP congressman—into the ten figure club.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2025/10/01/former-energy-secretarys-startup-mints-three-billionaires-despite-no-revenues-rick-perry-toby-neugebauer/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

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00:00Today on Forbes, former energy secretary's startup mints three billionaires despite no revenues.

00:08Plenty of billionaires have been created by the artificial intelligence and data center booms,

00:13and now the real estate underneath the data centers is generating 10-figure fortunes too.

00:19At least three new billionaires joined the Three Comma Club on Wednesday after Fermi America,

00:24an Amarillo, Texas-based real estate investment trust co-founded by former energy secretary and

00:30former Texas governor Rick Perry, went public on the Nasdaq. The stock opened at $21 and closed 55%

00:38higher at $32.53 per share, valuing the nine-month-old firm at $19 billion, despite the fact

00:47that it has yet to generate any sales. The biggest winner is Toby Nagabauer,

00:53who is 54 years old, the firm's president and CEO, and one of three co-founders alongside Perry

00:59and his son, Griffin Perry. The son of former Texas congressman Randy Nagabauer, he and his family own

01:06an estimated 28% stake worth $6 billion as of market close on Wednesday, based on an analysis of a

01:13prospectus filed on October 1st. A large chunk of that stake is held in trusts for his wife and two

01:19children. Griffin Perry, who is 42 years old, is the next largest shareholder, with an estimated

01:2611% stake worth $2.3 billion. Unlike his father, who serves as a director at the firm, the younger

01:34Perry doesn't have a formal role at Fermi. Stephen Meisel, who is 40 years old, an investor in the

01:41company through his firm Pencross Energy, is worth $1.8 billion. Rick Perry himself, while not quite a

01:49billionaire, owns a stake worth some $540 million. In 2019, Forbes estimated then-Energy Secretary Perry's

01:58net worth at just $3 million. A spokesperson for Fermi declined to comment. Fermi, founded in January,

02:06hasn't made a dime. In fact, it's lost $6.4 million over its first six months of existence.

02:14That's not surprising, given that it doesn't have any customers yet. In its prospectus, it stated it

02:20was, quote, actively targeting potential clients, but didn't name any of them, instead citing Musk's

02:27XAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic as, quote, potential hyperscaler tenants. The firm claims it signed a letter of

02:35intent in September for its first gigawatt of power with an unnamed, quote, investment-grade

02:40tenant, and pointed to recent data center leasing transactions in the market to estimate that it

02:46could generate $1.5 billion in revenues from a lease for one gigawatt of capacity. Still, it called

02:53these, quote, illustrative returns, rather than projections of its future revenue. The upstart will

02:59have to battle it out with more established data center operators, including giants like CoreWeave,

03:05which counts among its customers blue-chip firms such as Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI.

03:11CoreWeave's stock has more than tripled since the firm went public in March, minting five billionaires

03:16and valuing the company at $60 billion. But investors apparently like Fermi's business plan,

03:22which is centered on a 5,236-acre Amarillo, Texas site called Project Matador, on which the company

03:30aims to eventually deliver as much as 11 gigawatts of energy from natural gas, nuclear, and solar

03:36plants. Fermi claims it can bring 1.1 gigawatts of that online by the end of 2026 in conjunction with

03:43the local utility. All that power will theoretically flow to as-of-yet undetermined data centers on the

03:49same site. Fermi holds a 99-year lease to the land, which is owned by Texas Tech University.

03:56While Fermi aims to power much of the center with nuclear energy, as well as some solar,

04:01it will initially rely on natural gas, similar to other enormous data centers like Elon Musk's

04:07XAI Colossus in Memphis, Tennessee. In September, Fermi signed a letter of intent with Siemens Energy

04:13to purchase three gas turbines to generate 1.1 gigawatts for the site. The deal also calls for

04:20Fermi and Siemens to collaborate on nuclear steam turbines and integrate them into the four Westinghouse

04:25nuclear reactors it plans to build on the site. Rick Perry, who is 75 years old and who served as

04:32U.S. Energy Secretary between 2017 and 2019 during President Donald Trump's first term,

04:38is a strong proponent of nuclear energy. For full coverage, check out Kyle Kahn-Mullins and

04:45Giacomo Taggini's piece on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

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