Oracle has issued a force majeure notice to the developer of Project Jupiter, a Stargate data center campus in New Mexico.
These clauses excuse a party from contractual obligations when events outside its control get in the way. Oracle is not seeking to exit as the campus’s main tenant. Instead, the notice would allow the company to delay payments should the facility miss its 2028 target to come online.
The notice also comes as AI data center construction faces growing scrutiny nationally, and as developers take on steep costs to build capacity for customers like OpenAI.
Oracle maintains that it does not expect a delay. “Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule,” Oracle said in a statement to CNBC. “We are fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward.”
Blue Owl Capital, whose unit received the notice, said in its own statement to CNBC that “this notice does not change the financial commitments to this multi-year project.”
Neither Oracle nor Blue Owl immediately responded to TechCrunch’s requests for comment.
Still, the notice follows a string of setbacks at the site, many of them tied to its energy supply. The campus, designed to handle 2.45 gigawatts, is meant to run on gas-powered fuel cells from Bloom Energy, which makes a reliable gas supply central to its timeline.
An Energy Transfer pipeline intended to deliver gas to the site has also been delayed nearly six months, to Feb. 1, 2027, after regulators repeatedly denied permits for the line. In August, Bloomberg reported that the pipeline’s route had been changed following those rejections. A separate air quality permit for the fuel cell system that would power the campus is also pending. The state’s environment department faces a Nov. 23 deadline to decide.
Project Jupiter is one of the flagship sites of Stargate, the AI infrastructure initiative Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank announced with President Donald Trump early in his second term. The campus has drawn opposition from residents and environmental groups and has become a political flashpoint ahead of the midterm elections. Oracle has responded with a public outreach campaign in the state aimed at winning over the project’s critics, according to Bloomberg.
What it means
For the people building the infrastructure, the legal protection is a buffer against delays that are not their fault. It shifts the risk of missing the 2028 deadline away from Oracle’s cash flow. For the developers, the financial promise remains intact, but the timeline is now tied to external factors like gas pipelines and air quality permits. For the local community and political opponents, the legal move highlights the friction between corporate ambitions and local realities. The project remains on paper, but the physical buildout waits on permits and fuel lines.
