AI nuclear power firm Fermi finally has a new CEO

Fermi, the AI nuclear power firm, has named a new CEO more than three months after firing co-founder Toby Neugebauer from the top executive post.

Fermi said Wednesday it has hired Lee McIntire, an independent member of the company’s board who has held chief executive positions at CH2M Hill and TerraPower, the nuclear power startup founded by Bill Gates.

Fermi America, which was co-founded by former U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, is developing an AI campus in Amarillo, Texas, called Project Matador that will eventually use nuclear reactors to power data centers.

The announcement, along with Monday’s news that it had signed TensorWave as its first binding customer lease for its Project Matador campus, provided a welcome boost to Fermi’s stock. (The stock is up nearly 23% since Monday.) The young company took a hit in April when Neugebauer and CFO Miles Everson were pushed out of the company. At the time, the company described the executive shakeup, along with other plans including a corporate headquarters in Dallas, as Fermi 2.0.

“Fermi’s next chapter is a construction and power delivery story, and we believe Lee is the ideal executive to lead Fermi through that process,” Marius Haas, Fermi’s chairman of the board, said in a statement. “The job now is to build on schedule, on budget, and safely. Lee has spent 40 years delivering exactly this kind of large, complex project. He also knows Fermi from the inside, having served on our board through our latest period of growth, and he brings a reputation for integrity that Fermi’s customers, employees, regulators, and neighbors can rely on.”