Confrontation Between Billionaire Ceo And Lutnick Hints At Trouble With Huge Data Center Project

A confrontation between a Dallas billionaire and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at a Silicon Valley conference has exposed simmering tensions over an effort to secure financing for a sprawling campus of data centers powered by a private energy grid.

Toby Neugebauer, the CEO and co-founder of Fermi America, became “loud and belligerent” with Lutnick at the Nvidia GTC conference in San Jose, California, on Tuesday as he raised the issue of investment from South Korea in the data center project, according to a witness. Two other people familiar with the dispute agreed with that characterization. All three were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

Neugebauer, who has an established relationship with Lutnick and has done business with the secretary’s sons, disputes the description of the encounter as heated but concedes he had a “direct conversation” about what he sees as Lutnick’s interference in Fermi’s planned Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus in West Texas.

“I spoke with the secretary over the fact that we are the only actionable site with Koreans ready to partner and break ground in Amarillo this year, and I’m frustrated with the lack of progress,” he said in a statement Thursday.

The incident provides a glimpse behind the scenes of an effort to develop one of the largest clusters of AI data centers in the country, a project that could cost $60 billion and is linked to President Donald Trump’s global tariffs and efforts to secure foreign direct investment as part of a trade deal with South Korea.

Companies from South Korea are involved with the project and the country has pledged to invest $350 billion in the U.S. Lutnick, as Commerce secretary, will have some oversight over the investments in the trade deal but it’s unclear what, if anything, he or the department has done to interfere with the project.

During their exchange at the tech conference, Neugebauer said “everyone says you’re blocking it,” according to the person who witnessed it. The secretary responded that he didn’t know what the CEO was talking about.

At one point, Lutnick’s security detail decided to intervene and separated the men, according to the witness and the people familiar with the incident. Neugebauer disputes those accounts and says he was merely “passed” to the secretary’s staff.

In his statement to POLITICO, Neugebauer complained about Lutnick though neither he nor Fermi would provide any details about the dispute.

“I made it clear that the secretary’s personal, political optics shouldn’t interfere with making a deal with Korea that overwhelmingly benefited America,” Neugebauer said.

The Commerce Department declined comment and the Embassy of South Korea did not respond to a request to answer questions about the situation.

Fermi’s sprawling, 11-gigawatt energy and AI project would bring nuclear, solar, natural gas and batteries to a dusty plot in the Texas panhandle. The company, which was co-founded by former Trump energy secretary Rick Perry, struck deals with South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility and Hyundai Engineering and Construction to work on nuclear power at the site, called Project Matador.

The facility is expected to produce nuclear power from four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors totaling 4.4 gigawatts of electricity. The first reactor is scheduled to be operational by 2032. Doosan is slated to provide nuclear power plant components and Hyundai will take a lead role building the reactors, Fermi has said.

Trump administration officials have given their approval to the project in discussions with Siemens Energy, helping Fermi secure large gas turbines. In an ad buy over Thanksgiving in the Fox News market serving Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Fermi pitched Trump and his allies on investing money pledged as part of the U.S.-South Korean trade deal.

“We have driven our 11-GW project all the way to the goal line. But not without resistance from the swamp,” one ad said. “We need a presidential ‘tush push’ to score for America and start nuclear construction in 2026, delivering on President Trump’s promise of a nuclear renaissance.”

Neugebauer, the son of a former Republican congressmember from Texas, said he’s known Lutnick for years, and Fermi has ties to Lutnick’s sons, Kyle and Brandon. The two helped pull together $107.6 million for the project, The New York Times reported in November, citing filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Despite the incident, Neugebauer said he enjoyed the Nvidia conference. “We couldn’t have had a better time at GTC with fantastic meetings all week and have already booked our rooms for next year,” he said.