The notice was delivered to a unit of Blue Owl Capital that is developing the 1,400-acre campus in Doña Ana County, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the matter. Oracle shares fell around 5 percent following the news, reflecting investor unease about the scale of the company's AI infrastructure commitments.
Force majeure clauses, common in energy and infrastructure contracts, let a party pause certain contractual obligations when circumstances beyond its control prevent it from meeting them.
The clause creates a mechanism for Oracle to defer rent — potentially for up to three years after payments begin if both sides agree a power-related force majeure event occurred — without abandoning its role as the campus's anchor tenant.
Oracle insists the project stays on schedule
Both companies pushed back against suggestions the notice signals trouble. "Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule," Oracle said in a statement to Reuters.
"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 data center developer Stack Infrastructure, said the notice "does not change the financial commitments to this multi-year project" and that the two companies remain "fully aligned." Oracle separately told CNBC it is "fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward."
Still, analysts note that the notice arrives amid real infrastructure headaches at the site, most of them tied to the project's enormous power needs.
Power supply emerges as the key challenge
Project Jupiter is designed to deliver 2.45 gigawatts of computing capacity — roughly the electricity consumption of 1.8 million homes — and will rely on natural-gas-powered fuel cells supplied by Bloom Energy. A steady gas supply is therefore central to hitting the 2028 target.
An Energy Transfer pipeline planned to feed gas to the campus has slipped nearly six months to February 1, 2027, after regulators repeatedly rejected its permit applications. A separate air-quality permit for the fuel cell system remains pending, with New Mexico regulators facing a November 23 deadline to rule.
Bloomberg reported in August that the pipeline route had been modified after the earlier rejections.
Stakes for the Stargate buildout
Project Jupiter is one of the flagship sites in Stargate, the AI infrastructure venture Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank unveiled alongside US President Donald Trump in January 2025. The program was initially valued at $100 billion and has since grown beyond $400 billion.
The campus reportedly secured $18 billion in loans from a consortium of banks, and the notice highlights the financing risks now attached to the rapid expansion of AI data center construction across the United States.
As developers take on significant debt to build computing capacity for customers such as OpenAI, energy permits and grid connections have become the binding constraint on the industry's growth plans.
For now, Oracle says it does not expect a delay. But the force majeure notice ensures the company has contractual breathing room if power infrastructure keeps dragging — a precaution that investors, having watched the stock drop, will be watching closely.
