Key points
- Oracle reportedly sent Blue Owl a force majeure notice
- Oracle seeks payment delays if the project misses 2028
- Oracle says the project remains on schedule
- Project loans were quoted below face value this month
Oracle (ORCL) sent a force majeure notice to the developer of its Project Jupiter data center in New Mexico, a unit of Blue Owl Capital (OWL), to protect itself from potential cost increases, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. Oracle shares were down 5.3% at $136.83 in morning trading, while Blue Owl was down 3.3%.
Oracle is aiming to delay payments if the project is derailed and fails to come online in 2028 as planned, "rather than exiting as the main tenant," Reuters wrote in its summary of the Bloomberg report. Reuters said it could not independently verify the report.
Oracle said in a statement to CNBC that "Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule," adding, "We are fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward." Blue Owl said in its own statement to CNBC, "This notice does not change the financial commitments to this multi-year project."
Oracle also posted the full statement on X.
See Oracle's post on X
Later on Thursday, Oracle said in a post on X that force majeure notices are common in developments of this scale and do not, by themselves, establish a delay.
See Oracle's post on X
Force majeure provisions can allow contractual relief for specified events beyond a party's control. Sending a notice does not establish that Oracle is entitled to delay payments.
Project Jupiter is a 1,400-acre campus in Doña Ana County that Oracle has agreed to lease. The site is part of Oracle's agreement to supply computing power to OpenAI under Stargate, the $500 billion infrastructure plan led by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle.
Loans and permits
The report follows signs of strain in the project's financing. About $18 billion of loans financing the campus were quoted at 89 to 91 cents on the dollar earlier this month as the banks arranging them struggled to sell the debt, the Financial Times reported, as we covered at the time.
The project also still needs a state air quality permit. On September 17, the New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously rejected two environmental groups' challenges and allowed the permit proceedings, frozen since August, to resume, Source NM reported. The New Mexico Environment Department must still decide whether to approve the project's natural-gas-powered fuel cell system.
The hearing officer on that case recused himself in August. The department had not named a replacement or set a new hearing date as of the court's ruling.
Oracle and Blue Owl prices are as of 10:33 a.m. Eastern on September 24, 2026.
