Oracle has sent a force majeure notice over Project Jupiter, its huge AI data center under construction in New Mexico, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The notice went to the project's developer, a unit of investment firm Blue Owl Capital.
Companies typically cite force majeure to escape contract obligations when events beyond their control intervene. According to the Bloomberg report, Oracle wants the right to delay payments if the campus fails to open in 2028 as planned, rather than to walk away as the site's main tenant.
Project Jupiter, located in Doña Ana County near the US-Mexico border, is part of the Stargate program to build computing power for OpenAI and could cost up to $165 billion. It's designed to run on as much as 2.45GW of Bloom Energy fuel cells, which run on natural gas — and getting that gas to the site has been the problem. The New Mexico State Land Office rejected rights-of-way for a supply pipeline in March, and did so again in July, with Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard citing emissions and strain on water and other local resources.
Energy Transfer, which would build the 17.8-mile pipeline, has since rerouted it across federal land and pushed back the pipeline's start date from August 15 to February 1. Oracle said as recently as August that the project remained on schedule, and the force majeure notice would give the company cover should that change.
The stakes extend beyond a single site: Stargate's backers, including SoftBank, are raising record sums of debt to fund OpenAI's computing plans, and any delay at Jupiter would push those plans back.