Fermi's mystery customer from Thursday's announcement finally has a name.

On Thursday, the Project Matador developer said an unnamed "investment-grade hyperscaler" committed to an initial 600 MW starting in 2027, backed by a $200 million prepayment and a $15 million early construction deal.

On Friday, the Financial Times named Amazon as the customer, and the stock went vertical.

FRMI jumped as much as 42% to $2.92 before settling at $2.61, up 27% on the day after a 14% gain on Thursday.

This is more of a triumphant return of the big fish Fermi has been trying to hook since 2025. After a mystery tenant had previously pulled a $150 million construction advance, Business Insider reported that then-CEO Toby Neugebauer had told it the tenant was Amazon, even though the reports were later denied by Fermi and Neugebauer.

Small wins, but mostly aches and pains

In November 2025, we warned that storm clouds were gathering as Fermi struggled to sign its first major tenant. A month later, the stock cratered 50% when Amazon walked. In April, shares crashed another 22% after the board ousted Neugebauer and the CFO quit.

Even when we discussed last month the NRC backing Fermi's four AP1000s with a draft environmental review, some of the deadlines and expected timelines have already been blown out one to two years.

This past week saw a more mixed basket of good and bad news.

The good

Amazon replaces, rather than adds to, Fermi's first lease. The 222 MW, $6.5 billion TensorWave lease, which blew through its Oct. 31 closing deadline, has been terminated and took AMD's credit support with it.

Fermi also put out that the hardware is arriving. The third-quarter deck shows all six GE Vernova 6B turbines and five of six Siemens F-class units on site, eight Siemens SGT-800s in transit, and about 2 GW of generation secured.

A service agreement with Xcel's Southwestern Public Service adds up to 200 MW of grid power.

Fermi plans to mobilize for the new customer by Dec. 1 and targets first power in late Q2 or early Q3 2027, with up to 925 MW available that year, 600 MW of it reserved for Amazon.

Last December, Fermi was talking about hundreds of megawatts online by early 2026, and as of Sept. 30 none of its own equipment had been placed in service.

And the board is still holding off Neugebauer, mostly. Fermi fired him for cause in April, citing public outbursts it said hurt its search for tenants.

Since then, he has sued the company and three directors, pushed for a sale, suspended a special meeting campaign in July and lost a bid to block new voting rules in September.

He did land one punch. At the Oct. 30 annual meeting, Neugebauer-affiliated holders voted about 99 million shares against co-founder Rick Perry, who, like director Jeffrey Stein, fell short of the majority of outstanding shares the bylaws require. Both keep their seats as holdovers, and Fermi says the vote breached a 2025 nomination agreement.

The bad

Then there's the nuclear half of the "HyperGrid."

In Thursday's 10-Q, Fermi said it now expects to commission one Westinghouse AP1000 a year from 2034 through 2037. Its previous quarterly filing said 2033 through 2036, and the original plan called for the first unit in 2032, per Bloomberg.

Most of the blame for the schedule getting kicked out is likely stemming from delays in getting the license request fully submitted…

When the NRC accepted part of Fermi's application in September 2025, Fermi told the agency it would file its final siting chapter by Dec. 31, 2026. An Oct. 29 letter pushed that to Oct. 31, 2027, ten months late.

The rest of an updated application, folding in Westinghouse's latest AP1000 design revision, now comes June 30, 2027.

The man running that effort is also gone. Fermi disclosed that Chief Nuclear Construction Officer Mesut Uzman, hired for his work delivering reactors in China and the UAE, left on Oct. 12.

As recently as Oct. 1, NRC letters went to him as head of Fermi Nuclear LLC. Seventeen days after he left, COO Jacobo Ortiz signed the delay letter and listed himself as the NRC's new contact.

Fermi isn't the only one sliding. On Nov. 10, Ontario Power Generation said the first GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 at Darlington, the West's leading SMR project, will miss its October 2030 target and its C$7.7 billion (US$5.4 billion) estimate. OPG pinned it on GEVH's "ongoing engineering for its first-of-a-kind SMR" and won't have new numbers until mid-2027.

Darlington at least has a first-of-a-kind excuse. Fermi is licensing the AP1000, a design already running at Vogtle.

Amazon's $200 million buys Fermi their gas-fired head start, but it doesn't buy back the two years its reactors have lost.