Oracle has sent a force majeure notice to Stack Infrastructure, the developer of Project Jupiter, its Stargate data center campus in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, citing potential delays in securing electricity for the site. Reuters reported the step on 24 September 2026, citing a person familiar with the matter; the notice was first reported by Bloomberg the same day. Force majeure, "superior force" in French, is a contractual provision a party may invoke to escape contractual obligations because of unforeseen or unusual circumstances.
Oracle presents the notice as routine rather than a retreat. Spokesperson Michael Egbert told the Albuquerque Journal that the project "remains on our planned schedule" and that the company is "fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward," adding that "force-majeure notices are commonplace in developments of this scale and are often used to preserve contractual rights among project partners. They do not, by themselves, establish a project delay or change delivery expectations." Blue Owl, which owns Stack Infrastructure, said the notice "does not change the financial commitments to this multi-year project." Under the contract, securing power is Oracle's responsibility, according to the source cited by Reuters, and Oracle cannot terminate the lease under any circumstances; the notice would instead let it delay payments if the campus misses its 2028 online target.
The financial structure explains why the wording matters to lenders and investors. Blue Owl holds about 3 billion dollars of equity in the project and earns a 9 percent yield on that equity during the development stage, the source said, with a levered yield of around 11 percent expected once the campus is completed. Oracle is responsible for paying the debt costs. By invoking force majeure, Oracle extends the period in which it pays the lower, development-stage rent; Blue Owl still receives the higher rent for the originally planned duration, but the start of that period is postponed. The 1,400-acre campus secured 18 billion dollars in loans from a consortium of banks, according to media reports.
The setbacks at the site are concentrated in energy. The campus is designed to handle 2.45 gigawatts of load and leans on a state air-quality permit to build a 2.45-gigawatt power plant serving the data center; reporting points to gas-powered fuel cells from Bloom Energy, which makes a dependable gas supply central to the timeline. An Energy Transfer pipeline intended to deliver gas to the site has been delayed by nearly six months, to 1 February 2027, after regulators repeatedly denied permits for the line. On the legal front, New Mexico's Supreme Court handed the project a regulatory victory the previous week, lifting stays that had paused an air-quality permit application and blocked water pumping for the construction site. Egbert said the project hired more than 900 workers in August and that more than 3,600 construction workers are building the campus.
Project Jupiter is one of the flagship sites of Stargate, the AI infrastructure initiative announced by Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank with a 500 billion dollar investment commitment. The campus has drawn opposition from residents and environmental groups and has become a political flashpoint ahead of the midterm elections: Democratic U.S. Representative Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico called for a pause in data center development, arguing that AI and data centers cannot be allowed to regulate themselves.
What the notice does not establish is a delay, a cancellation or a default. Oracle reiterated that it expects to stay on schedule, and brokerage William Blair said the news intensifies worries about regulatory and power-related delays affecting AI deployments but expects minimal short-term impact, adding that "practically, fiscal 2027 should not be affected, since Jupiter contributes no revenue this year." The market reacted anyway: Oracle shares fell more than 3 percent on 24 September, trading at $139.54, more than $100 below the 2026 peak of $248 reached in early June. On a 10 September earnings call, co-CEO Clay Magouyrk observed that an infrastructure plan depending on 100 percent achievement of every deliverable is "a bad plan." Neither company has said the project is being scaled back, and no updated completion date has been provided, leaving the practical cost of the power bottleneck unquantified.
Sources
- Channel NewsAsia (Reuters), "Oracle triggers force majeure on data center project over power delays, source says": channelnewsasia.com
- Albuquerque Journal, "Oracle invokes 'force majeure' on Project Jupiter, but says data center still on track": abqjournal.com
