Project Jupiter: The AI Buildout Cracks
The $165 billion AI campus at the centre of the Stargate program just sent a legal \
distress signal. Oracle invoked force majeure on Project Jupiter, its 1,400-acre New Mexico data center, on September 23, 2026. The notice went to Stack Infrastructure, the Blue Owl Capital company building the site. It gives Oracle one right: defer payments if the campus misses its planned 2028 opening. Oracle is not walking away. But it is hedging, in writing, because the project has no power and no clear path to getting any. The core problem is a 17-mile natural gas pipeline called the Green Chile Project. Oracle switched Project Jupiter to Bloom Energy fuel cells in April 2026, and those cells need the pipeline to run. The New Mexico State Land Office denied the right-of-way twice: March 2026 and July 14, 2026. The pipeline has slipped from August 2026 to February 2027.
Project cost
$165 billion planned
Power capacity
2.45 GW (enough to power 1.8 million homes)
Site
1,400 acres, Dona Ana County, New Mexico
Construction progress
26% complete as of September 2026
Project debt
$18 billion from 20 banks, trading below 90 cents on dollar
Pipeline delay
August 2026 target pushed to February 1, 2027
Oracle stock peak (June 2026)
$248 per share
Oracle stock on September 24, 2026
~$138 per share, down 4% on the news
Bloom Energy stock on September 24
Down 6%
"Anyone that's been in the business of doing construction or large-scale infrastructure development, if their plan relies on 100% achievement of every one of their deliverables, we have a term for that: It's called a bad plan.
"Clay Magouyrk · Oracle co-CEO · earnings call · September 10 2026
A 0.6-mile strip of state trust land broke a $165 billion project.
State Land Commissioner Garcia Richard said the pipeline "appears to offer very little benefit to the State Land Office's beneficiary institutions," citing water use, CO2 emissions, and zero revenue for state beneficiaries. FERC separately stalled Energy Transfer's fast-track federal application over a missing historic-preservation filing. One administrative veto over less than a mile of land delayed the pipeline six months. That doubt triggered distressed-debt pricing on $18 billion of construction loans, with debt trading below 90 cents on the dollar before Oracle had even called its lawyers. Oracle: "Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule. We are fully committed to New Mexico." Blue Owl: "This notice does not change the financial commitments to this multi-year project." Neither said how the campus powers itself if the pipeline is still blocked in February.
Project Jupiter is the centrepiece of a $500 billion political promise.
When President Trump stood alongside Oracle's Larry Ellison, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son to announce Stargate in January 2025, Project Jupiter was the anchor campus: the largest single site, visual proof the AI legacy was real. Oracle's own business is booming. Q1 FY2027 cloud revenue jumped 62% to $11.6 billion. Remaining performance obligations stand at $664 billion. The demand exists. The problem is the physical world: pipelines, permits, water, air quality law, state trust land boundaries, and midterm election politics in a region where opposition to data centers has become a campaign issue. Oracle's co-CEO said a plan requiring every deliverable to go right is a bad plan. That is also the description of Stargate's flagship campus.
