Oracle's force majeure notice on New Mexico's Project Jupiter

On Thursday, Oracle sent a force majeure notice to the developer of Project Jupiter, the Stargate data center campus it is building in New Mexico, Bloomberg first reported. It is not an exit: according to Bloomberg's sources, Oracle is not seeking to leave the campus as its main tenant. The notice would instead let the company delay payments if the facility misses its 2028 target to come online.

It matters because the notice puts a contractual hedge on paper at one of the most watched AI infrastructure projects in the US, at a moment when AI data center construction faces growing national scrutiny, and developers are taking on steep costs to build capacity for customers like OpenAI.

What the notice actually does

Force majeure clauses are common in energy and commodities contracts: they excuse a party from its contractual obligations when events outside its control get in the way. Practically, this is a hedge rather than a cancellation. It keeps the relationship between Oracle and the project's developer intact while creating a documented path to delay payments if the 2028 deadline slips.

Both companies played it down in statements to CNBC. "Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule," Oracle said, adding: "We are fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward." Blue Owl Capital, whose unit received the notice, said in turn 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.

A timeline that depends on gas

The notice follows a string of setbacks at the site, many of them tied to its energy supply. The campus is designed to handle 2.45 gigawatts, and it is meant to run on gas-powered fuel cells from Bloom Energy, which makes a reliable gas supply central to its timeline.

The open problems, per the reporting:

• The Energy Transfer pipeline intended to deliver gas to the site has been delayed nearly six months, to February 1, 2027, after regulators repeatedly denied permits for the line.
• In August, Bloomberg reported the pipeline's route had been changed following those permit 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 November 23 deadline to decide.

The bigger picture

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.

The timing is notable: with the midterms approaching, the site's opposition has made Project Jupiter one of the few Stargate locations where permitting and public acceptance are progressing in parallel. The outreach campaign Bloomberg describes, aimed squarely at the state's critics, reads as an attempt to keep the political side of the timeline as solid as the construction side.

If you are planning capacity around these buildouts, the practical read is straightforward: the 2028 date still stands, but the contract now carries an explicit payment-hedge on record. The milestones to watch are the air-quality permit decision (November 23) and the rescheduled gas pipeline (February 1, 2027). Those two dates, not the notice itself, are what will determine whether the schedule holds.