Oracle Says Its New Mexico Stargate Site Is On Schedule. It Filed to Delay the Rent Anyway.

Oracle says Project Jupiter, its 2.45-gigawatt AI data center in southern New Mexico, remains on schedule. It has also sent its landlord a force majeure notice, which is the paperwork you file when you think you might not be able to hold up your end.

The notice went to Stack Infrastructure, a Blue Owl Capital unit developing the campus in Doña Ana County. Oracle is the tenant, and per Bloomberg's reporting it cannot walk away from the lease and is not trying to. What the notice does is preserve an argument. If the site misses its 2028 target because the power did not show up, Oracle wants the right to push back when the rent clock starts.

What force majeure actually means here

Force majeure is the clause that covers what happens when something outside your control wrecks the timeline. Acts of God, wars, that sort of thing. You do not eat the penalty for a delay you did not cause. Sending a notice is not the same as winning the argument, though. Both sides have to agree an event occurred, or someone has to settle it for them.

According to Bloomberg Law, agreement on a power-related force majeure event could win Oracle up to a three-year delay on rent commencement. That is not free money. Oracle would still owe the back rent once payments start, and it stays on the hook for other costs in the meantime.

The pipeline is the problem

What broke here is gas. Jupiter was never going to pull 2.45 gigawatts off the grid. Oracle is powering it with Bloom Energy solid oxide fuel cells, which make electricity electrochemically and barely use water. In a desert, that last part is most of the pitch.

Fuel cells still need fuel. Energy Transfer's Green Chile lateral, a 17-mile natural gas line, was supposed to deliver it. New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard rejected the right-of-way applications to cross state trust land, first in March and again in July. Energy Transfer redrew the route. In-service slipped from August to February 1, 2027.

A second permit is still outstanding. The state air-quality permit for the fuel cell system is pending, and the state is up against a deadline to act on it.

What Oracle and Blue Owl say

Oracle's line is that none of this is unusual. "Force-majeure notices are commonplace in developments of this scale and are often used to preserve contractual rights among project partners," the company said. "They do not, by themselves, establish a project delay or change delivery expectations." It added that Jupiter "remains on our planned schedule" and that Oracle is "fully committed to New Mexico," pointing to 3,600 workers on site and more than 900 hired in August.

Blue Owl was equally calm. "This notice does not change the financial commitments to this multiyear project," a spokesman said.

Nobody files for protection against a delay they are confident will not happen.

The stock, and a number that does not line up

Investors did not take the calm at face value. Oracle fell more than 3% Thursday to $139.54, per the Albuquerque Journal, which is more than $100 off its early-June peak of about $248. The size of the one-day drop depends on where you look: Bloomberg Law put it at 4.4%, Investing.com at roughly 4%. Blue Owl slid about 4% and Bloom Energy about 6%.

The price tag is murkier. Reuters, as cited in follow-up coverage, puts total development cost around $18 billion, with Blue Owl in for roughly $3 billion of equity. 24/7 Wall St. has attached a $165 billion figure to Jupiter, which reads closer to the scale of the wider Stargate commitments than to one campus. We cannot reconcile the two, so treat the big number carefully.

Where this sits in Stargate

Stargate is the AI infrastructure push OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank announced together with President Trump. OpenAI's agreement with Oracle and SoftBank, reported at $400 billion, covers five US data centers, and Jupiter is the one that got the marquee treatment, with OpenAI as the customer. Oracle's job on this site is the unglamorous half. It holds the lease, and it is responsible for securing the power.

That is the part that slipped. Oracle insists 2028 holds. Residents and environmental groups in Doña Ana County are still fighting the project over water and utility costs, and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández has called for a pause on data center development in the state. Oracle asked for a rent cushion on a project it says will not need one. The state has until November 23 to rule on the air permit.