Oracle sends force majeure notice on New Mexico Stargate site

Oracle has sent a force majeure notice to the developer of Project Jupiter, a Stargate data center campus in New Mexico, Bloomberg first reported Thursday. Force majeure clauses, common in energy and commodities contracts, 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, according to Bloomberg’s sources, but the notice would let the company 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 it does not expect a delay. “Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule,” the company 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 that the notice does not change the financial commitments to the multi-year project. Neither Oracle nor Blue Owl responded to TechCrunch’s requests for comment.

The notice follows a string of setbacks at the site, many 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 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 rejections. A separate air-quality permit for the fuel cell system is also pending, with the state’s environment department facing a November 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 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.

Why it matters

A force majeure notice — even one Oracle insists is precautionary — signals that the energy bottlenecks slowing AI data centers nationally are hitting Stargate’s own flagship site, adding financial hedging to a project that’s also become a live political target ahead of the midterms.