Oracle invokes force majeure on its New Mexico data centre and Blue Owl takes the hit

Oracle sent a force majeure notice on its New Mexico Stargate data center, TechCrunch reported, and the notice would allow Oracle to delay payments should the facility miss its 2028 target to come online¹. DataCenterDynamics reported that the notice went to Blue Owl, following a series of setbacks at the Project Jupiter data center campus, and described the site as a 2.5 gigawatt project in New Mexico due online in 2028⁴.

RTTNews, citing a Bloomberg report, said Oracle is seeking to protect itself against potential exposure at the project³. Forbes reported that Oracle stock slid after the company issued the notice², and the Motley Fool ran its own account of why the shares dropped, arguing that Oracle is building an AI house of cards⁶.

Why it matters to investors

This is what off-balance-sheet AI financing looks like when it goes wrong. The hyperscaler’s contractual escape hatch is the lender’s problem, and the lender here is a private credit manager rather than a bank. Yahoo Finance reported that Blue Owl led a $2.4 billion AI factory financing for IREN weeks before this notice, and that private credit defaults have hit a record 6.3%⁵.

The sequence matters. A force majeure notice is not a default; it is a claim that circumstances beyond the company’s control may excuse performance¹. But it arrives at a moment when the private credit channel funding data centre construction is already showing strain⁵, and it demonstrates that the risk in these structures sits with the financier rather than the tenant.

The equity market read it as a negative for Oracle all the same^2,6, which suggests investors see the notice as a signal about the project’s schedule rather than as a clean transfer of risk.

What to watch

The first marker is the 2028 date. Both TechCrunch and DataCenterDynamics tie the notice to that target^1,4, so any confirmation or slippage of the timetable is the single most informative disclosure to come.

The second is what the setbacks at Project Jupiter actually are. DataCenterDynamics describes a series of them without resolving the cause⁴, and RTTNews frames Oracle’s move as protective³.

The third is the private credit read-across. If a record default rate of 6.3% is the backdrop⁵, the question is whether other AI campus financings carry the same force majeure language, and which lenders hold them. Oracle’s own equity reaction is the near-term barometer².