Oracle has sent a force majeure notice to the developer of Project Jupiter, its New Mexico data center campus and one of the flagship sites of the Stargate build-out with OpenAI, SoftBank, and President Donald Trump. The notice, disclosed Thursday, would let Oracle delay payments if the 2.45-gigawatt facility misses its 2028 target to come online. Oracle shares fell more than 3% on the news, and Bloom Energy, which is slated to power the site with fuel cells, dropped 3% alongside it.
The developer receiving the notice is a unit of Blue Owl Capital, whose shares also slid on the report. Force majeure clauses, standard in energy and commodities contracts, excuse a party from contractual obligations when events outside its control interfere. Oracle is not exiting as the campus's main tenant — it is preserving optionality on payment timing if the project slips.
Oracle disputes any suggestion of a delay. The company told CNBC the site remains on its planned schedule and that it stands by its New Mexico commitment. Co-CEO Clay Magouyrk told analysts on Oracle's September 10 earnings call that Project Jupiter would not affect the company's previously stated fiscal 2027 revenue or earnings guidance.
Key facts
- 01Oracle sent a force majeure notice to a Blue Owl Capital unit developing Project Jupiter, its New Mexico Stargate campus.
- 02The notice lets Oracle delay payments if the 2.45-gigawatt site misses its 2028 online target.
- 03Oracle carries roughly $18 billion in debt tied to the project, already trading at stressed levels.
- 04Oracle shares fell 3%; Bloom Energy, which will power the site with fuel cells, also dropped 3%.
- 05An Energy Transfer gas pipeline for the site has slipped to a February 1, 2027 delivery date.
The financial stakes are considerable. Oracle carries roughly $18 billion in debt tied to the data center, and that paper is already trading at stressed levels, per the Financial Times. A missed 2028 online date would compound the pressure — the debt was underwritten against a specific revenue-generation timeline, and every quarter of delay widens the gap between interest costs and operational cash flow from the site.
The setbacks driving the notice are largely upstream of Oracle itself. Project Jupiter is designed to run on gas-powered fuel cells from Bloom Energy, which makes a reliable gas supply the linchpin of the schedule. An Energy Transfer pipeline meant to feed the campus has been pushed back nearly six months to February 1, 2027, after regulators repeatedly denied permits. In August, the pipeline's route was redrawn following those rejections.
A separate air-quality permit for the fuel cell system that would power the campus is still pending, with New Mexico's environment department facing a November 23 deadline to decide. Bloom Energy said on X that it remains committed to the contract and to the planned timeline.
“This notice does not change the financial commitments to this multi-year project.”— Blue Owl Capital, company statement to CNBC
Local opposition has also intensified. Residents and environmental groups have organized against the site, and the project has become a political flashpoint heading into the midterm elections. Oracle has responded with a public outreach campaign in the state aimed at winning over critics, per Bloomberg, but the regulatory calendar is not something a marketing push can accelerate.
Project Jupiter is one of the marquee sites of Stargate, the AI infrastructure initiative Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank announced with the White House early in Trump's second term. The program's credibility depends on flagship sites hitting their timelines — a delay at Jupiter is a delay in the compute pipeline OpenAI has been counting on to train and serve next-generation models. This follows the pattern we've been covering in AI infrastructure, from California's new data-center water and power disclosure laws to the local permitting fights slowing buildouts nationally.
There are reasons to take Oracle and Blue Owl at their word that this is a procedural hedge rather than a distress signal. Force majeure notices are routinely filed on complex energy-dependent projects to preserve legal position long before anyone believes a deadline will actually slip. Blue Owl's statement that the notice does not change the underlying financial commitments is consistent with that reading. But the bond market's view of the $18 billion in project debt suggests investors are pricing in more than a paperwork exercise.
For Oracle, the risk is not that Project Jupiter fails — it is that the AI infrastructure thesis it sold to investors requires flawless execution on multi-year, multi-gigawatt sites where the company controls neither the pipelines, the permits, nor the politics. A force majeure notice is the first formal acknowledgment that those upstream dependencies could bite. For Stargate as a program, and for the OpenAI capacity roadmap that depends on it, Jupiter is now the site to watch. If a 2.45-gigawatt build can slip on gas pipelines and air permits, every other hyperscale AI campus in permitting has just been repriced.
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