Oracle invokes force majeure as power delays test its New Mexico AI campus

Why it matters

Project Jupiter puts a concrete price on a growing AI infrastructure risk: a cloud tenant, a developer and its lenders can agree on the demand for computing, yet still disagree over who pays when power is late.

Oracle, the company co-founded by Larry Ellison, issued a force majeure notice on September 24th over Project Jupiter, a New Mexico data center campus intended to support OpenAI. A person familiar with the notice told Reuters that delays securing power are behind the move; another person familiar with the deal said the project is now expected to be delayed by about a year. Reuters reported that the notice has become a test case for lenders weighing the fast-growing market for AI infrastructure.

The immediate issue is contractual. Blue Owl's data center unit STACK Infrastructure is developing Jupiter, and Oracle is the tenant whose computing demand underpins the project. Blue Owl said the notice does not change the parties' financial commitments and that Blue Owl, STACK and Oracle remain aligned, according to Reuters. The statement is a defense of the project's commitments, not a confirmation that its schedule or power plan is unchanged.

Oracle's co-CEOs embody different parts of the company's AI push. Clay Magouyrk joined Oracle from Amazon Web Services in 2014 and became a founding member of Oracle's cloud engineering team; Mike Sicilia previously led Oracle Industries. Oracle named them co-CEOs in September 2025, as it emphasized both cloud infrastructure and industry software, according to Oracle's announcement. Jupiter puts Oracle's strategy on physical ground: a cloud business can sell AI computing only if developers can deliver a powered facility on schedule.

Power is the project schedule

The delay puts pressure on the returns Blue Owl expects from Jupiter. Reuters reported that Blue Owl has about $3 billion of equity invested and receives a lower return during construction, with returns increasing after completion. If construction runs roughly a year late, that higher-return period starts later too. The reported figure is an estimate from a person familiar with the deal, not a company-reported project valuation or a disclosed financing statement.

The power constraint has been visible in the project's public record. Oracle's June 3rd update said the campus's proposed energy design had shifted to a microgrid using Bloom Energy fuel cells, replacing an earlier gas-turbine and diesel-generator plan. A separate TechCrunch report said the natural-gas pipeline intended to supply the site had been delayed and that the fuel-cell system's air-quality permit remained pending. Oracle has drawn a line between the data center buildings and the separate microgrid permitting process, saying on September 14th that construction of the buildings did not require the air permit under review, in a statement on Project Jupiter.

That distinction may matter to the project's legal and construction status, but it does not supply electricity. Oracle's notice, according to Reuters, concerns delays securing power. The campus was announced by STACK in August 2025 as a proposed project in Doña Ana County; its public pitch included local jobs, independent power and water stewardship. The site's development now depends on coordinating construction with an energy system that has its own equipment, pipeline and regulatory timetable.

The financing bet gets more specific

Jupiter's importance extends beyond the companies on the project. Morgan Stanley estimates that AI infrastructure will require $1.5 trillion in external financing by 2028, while Moody's projects that capital spending by the six largest U.S. technology companies will reach about $1 trillion in 2027, according to Reuters. Those forecasts describe an enormous pool of planned spending, but capital commitments do not resolve site-level risks: a campus still needs power, permits and contracts that specify who absorbs delays.

Lenders and investors are scrutinizing those terms as data center construction faces more local opposition. Reuters cited Data Center Watch figures showing at least 45 projects worth $68 billion faced community opposition in the second quarter of 2026, after 75 projects worth about $130 billion were disrupted in the first quarter. In another example involving Blue Owl, the firm earlier struggled to syndicate financing for a $4 billion data center project in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, anchored by CoreWeave, according to Reuters.

The practical question for infrastructure investors is whether a force majeure clause shifts the cost of a delay or simply records that one has occurred. The exact terms of Oracle's notice and the parties' contractual obligations have not been disclosed in the reporting. For now, the consequences described by Reuters are concrete: the expected completion has moved by about a year, Blue Owl's higher construction-to-operation returns are pushed back, and the project's main tenant is invoking a provision tied to a power delay.

Oracle has said Jupiter remains on its planned schedule, while Blue Owl says financial commitments are unchanged. Oracle's schedule statement was reported by TechCrunch; Blue Owl's position was reported by Reuters. Those positions can coexist with a notice intended to protect Oracle if the project misses its target. They leave the central financing issue unresolved in public: how the contracts divide the cost when a large AI campus is ready to build but its power supply is not ready to serve it.