Tag: New Mexico

  • Oracle’s 3.5% Drop: A $664B AI Backlog Is Only as Good as Its Build Dates

    Oracle’s 3.5% Drop: A $664B AI Backlog Is Only as Good as Its Build Dates

    TL;DR · 30-second read

    The Short Version

    Oracle, the business software giant, holds about $664 billion in signed contracts to rent out computing power for artificial intelligence. It only gets paid once the buildings that house those computers are finished and switched on.

    A huge New Mexico site built for OpenAI faces local objections over water and air, and a setback on the gas pipeline meant to power it. Banks have struggled to resell $18 billion of loans for the site at full price, and Oracle’s shares fell 3.5% on fears of delay.

    The lesson: a promise of future business is only as good as the construction schedule behind it.

    Oracle shares fell 3.5% on concerns about data center delays, TradingView reported. The pressure centers on Project Jupiter, a New Mexico data center that is part of Oracle’s AI infrastructure expansion with OpenAI. The Financial Times reported, as relayed by Reuters, that about $18 billion of loans tied to the project were quoted at 89 to 91 cents on the dollar, and that banks had struggled to distribute the debt to other investors as concerns about Oracle’s leverage grew.

    Jupiter faces local opposition over water and air quality, and a proposed natural-gas pipeline to serve it has suffered a regulatory setback. Insider Monkey, summarizing Oracle’s latest figures, set those problems against a remaining contract backlog of $664 billion, fiscal 2026 capital spending of $55.7 billion and $125.3 billion of borrowings as of August 31.

    Executive Summary

    Oracle has no shortage of AI demand. Its remaining performance obligations, meaning revenue it has contracted but not yet earned, reached $664 billion, up $209 billion year over year. Cloud infrastructure revenue rose 121% to $7.4 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2027. The question the market is now asking is when that backlog becomes cash. That depends on physical sites being permitted, powered and energized on schedule.

    Project Jupiter shows how that dependency can bite. Opposition over water and air quality and a setback on a gas pipeline have raised questions about the site’s development. The $18 billion of debt behind it is being quoted below face value. S&P downgraded Oracle in July to one notch above junk, and Oracle’s spending already runs well ahead of its cash generation: free cash flow was negative $23.7 billion in fiscal 2026. At that point, schedule risk at a single campus becomes a balance-sheet question.

    This matters beyond Oracle. The episode shows that for a heavily committed AI builder, investors and lenders are pricing delivery dates, not just contract totals. It also shows who else carries that risk: lenders holding the project debt, the customer waiting for capacity, and investors in Oracle’s securities.

    A Backlog Is a Delivery Schedule, Not a Bank Balance

    Remaining performance obligations, often shortened to RPO, are revenue a company has signed contracts for but not yet recognized. Recognition happens as the service is delivered. For a cloud provider renting out AI computing, delivery means racks of GPUs running in an energized building. Oracle’s $664 billion of RPO dwarfs the $11.6 billion of cloud revenue it booked in its latest quarter. Most of that backlog therefore sits in future periods, and it cannot arrive faster than the capacity that delivers it.

    That is the mechanism behind the headline. A signed contract fixes the size of the opportunity but not its timing. When a site like Jupiter meets opposition over water and air quality, or a pipeline it needs for power hits a regulatory setback, the contract still stands. But the revenue stream shifts right on the calendar. The 3.5% share decline TradingView attributed to delay concerns came despite a backlog that grew by $209 billion in a year. For Oracle, the market is weighing build dates alongside contract totals, and it is treating the delivery schedule as the variable that determines what the backlog is worth today.

    The effect is sharpest for a company whose costs are already committed. A backlog funded out of spare cash flow can absorb a slipped date. A backlog funded with borrowed money pays interest on the gap.

    Costs Run on a Calendar; Revenue Waits for Power

    Oracle’s spending has moved far ahead of its cash generation. Capital expenditures, the money spent on buildings, servers and equipment, rose to $55.7 billion in fiscal 2026 from $21.2 billion a year earlier. The result was negative free cash flow of $23.7 billion. First-quarter fiscal 2027 capex alone was $28.5 billion, and Oracle expects full-year spending to exceed the prior year’s. The company raised $43 billion of debt and $5 billion of equity in fiscal 2026 and expects about $40 billion of additional debt and equity financing in fiscal 2027.

    Leases add a second layer. As of August 31, Oracle carried $34.6 billion of recognized operating lease liabilities plus $288 billion of additional data center lease commitments expected to begin between fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2029. Those commitments give Oracle capacity, but they also fix a schedule of obligations. The margin data already shows the strain: Oracle’s cloud and software margin percentage declined in the latest quarter as higher infrastructure expenses supported cloud growth. When a site is late, costs such as financing, early lease payments and pre-purchased equipment can arrive before the capacity produces revenue. That squeezes margin further.

    What Jupiter’s Discounted Debt Signals Down the Chain

    A loan quoted at 89 to 91 cents on the dollar means a holder selling $100 of it would receive roughly $89 to $91. Banks often underwrite large project loans intending to sell much of them on. When distribution stalls, they hold more of the risk themselves, and the discount tells future lenders what compensation the market now requires. Two separate concerns are bundled into that price. One is site-level: permits, water, air quality and a gas pipeline. The other is sponsor-level: Oracle’s leverage, which S&P flagged by downgrading the company in July to one notch above junk, the lowest rung of investment grade.

    Those risks reach beyond Oracle’s shareholders. Lenders holding the Jupiter loans are exposed to the site’s schedule. OpenAI, as the customer the expansion serves, depends on the capacity arriving when planned. Investors in Oracle’s debt are exposed to the financing needs any delay would enlarge. A Reuters Breakingviews commentary ran under the headline “Oracle freakout exposes fragile data center boom.” The evidence here, though, is one project at one company with an unusually leveraged balance sheet. Whether other builders face the same repricing is a question this episode raises but does not settle.

    The Offsets Are Real, but They Also Run on Delivery

    There is a genuine counterweight. Oracle said $75 billion of its large AI contracts involve customers prepaying for GPUs or supplying the GPUs themselves. That substantially reduces the capital Oracle must raise for AI data centers, and it shifts part of the chip bill to the parties that want the capacity. Cloud infrastructure revenue more than doubling in a quarter also shows that backlog is converting.

    Even so, customer-funded chips still need a building, power and cooling to go into. The customer funding eases the equipment side of the ledger. It does not remove the permitting and power risk that has put Jupiter under scrutiny. The balanced reading is that Oracle’s demand is well documented and its financing model is adapting. What the market is now testing is whether the build schedule can keep pace with the contracts.

    Background

    Oracle built its business on database and enterprise software and has spent recent years turning Oracle Cloud Infrastructure into a major supplier of AI computing, competing with the largest cloud providers, often called hyperscalers. Its fiscal year ends May 31. Its proxy statement filed September 25 lists Safra Catz, Clayton Magouyrk and Michael Sicilia each as a principal executive officer during fiscal 2026, reflecting a change at the top during the year.

    AI data centers pack thousands of power-hungry GPUs, the specialized chips used to train and run AI models, into buildings that need large, dependable electricity supplies and cooling. That makes power availability, water use and local permitting central to how fast capacity can be delivered. Project Jupiter in New Mexico, part of Oracle’s expansion with OpenAI, is one of the sites where those constraints now intersect with the company’s financing.

    Sources

    Source: Oracle’s AI Expansion Faces a New Test as Data Center Costs Rise (Insider Monkey), on the pricing of Project Jupiter’s $18 billion financing and Oracle’s spending, debt and backlog. Also cited: Oracle’s Stock Falls 3.5% on Data Center Delay Concerns (TradingView) and Breakingviews – COMMENTARY: Oracle freakout exposes fragile data center boom (Reuters).

    Primary sources: Oracle Corporation DEF 14A proxy statement, filed with the SEC on September 25, 2026.

  • Oracle’s Stargate Notice: A 2.45 GW AI Campus Runs on a Gas-Permit Clock

    Oracle’s Stargate Notice: A 2.45 GW AI Campus Runs on a Gas-Permit Clock

    TL;DR · 30-second read

    The Short Version

    Oracle, a major technology company, is the main tenant of a giant planned artificial-intelligence computing site in New Mexico called Project Jupiter. It is designed to use about as much electricity as two and a half large nuclear reactors produce.

    Oracle has sent the site’s builder a legal notice. The notice lets Oracle hold back payments if the site isn’t ready by 2028 because of events outside its control.

    The real issue is power. The site will make its own electricity from natural gas, but the gas pipeline has slipped to 2027 and a key air-pollution permit is still undecided. Oracle says the project is on schedule.

    Oracle has sent a force majeure notice to the developer of Project Jupiter, a 2.45-gigawatt Stargate data center campus in New Mexico, Bloomberg first reported on September 24, as relayed by TechCrunch. Blue Owl Capital said its unit received the notice. According to Bloomberg’s sources, Oracle is not seeking to exit as the campus’s main tenant; the notice would instead allow it to delay payments if the facility misses its 2028 target to come online.

    Both companies played the move down. “Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule,” Oracle told CNBC. “We are fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward.” Blue Owl told CNBC that “this notice does not change the financial commitments to this multi-year project.”

    Executive Summary

    A force majeure clause excuses a party from contractual obligations when events outside its control get in the way. Oracle’s notice cancels nothing. It reserves the right to push back Oracle’s payments to the developer if Project Jupiter is not ready by 2028, while both Oracle and Blue Owl say no delay is expected and no financial commitment has changed.

    The reason the notice matters is the campus’s power design. Jupiter is meant to generate its own electricity with Bloom Energy fuel cells running on natural gas, and the gas supply around it has already slipped: an Energy Transfer pipeline to the site has been pushed back nearly six months, to February 1, 2027, after regulators repeatedly denied permits. The fuel cells’ air-quality permit is still pending, with a state decision due by November 23.

    For one of Stargate’s flagship sites, the schedule that decides when AI capacity actually arrives now runs through two energy permits rather than through the construction site alone.

    A Notice That Reserves Options, Not an Exit

    Force majeure provisions are standard in energy and commodities contracts, and many contracts require prompt notice of a qualifying event before a party can rely on the clause. A notice can therefore be as much about preserving rights as about predicting a delay. That reading fits both public statements: Oracle says Jupiter is on schedule, and Blue Owl says the financial commitments are unchanged.

    Both claims can be true at once, but they do not fully dissolve the tension. A tenant certain of a 2028 delivery has less reason to formally reserve payment relief. The most even-handed interpretation is that the notice works like insurance: it is bought against a risk the buyer does not expect but cannot rule out. The question for everyone else is what that risk is.

    For a 2.45 GW AI Campus, Gas Permits Set the Clock

    Project Jupiter is designed for 2.45 gigawatts, roughly the output of two and a half large nuclear reactors, and it is meant to run on Bloom Energy fuel cells, which turn natural gas into electricity through a chemical reaction rather than by burning it. That makes the campus effectively its own power plant. It also means the facility cannot operate without a steady gas supply, so the pipeline and the fuel-cell permits sit on the critical path, the chain of tasks that sets the earliest possible finish date.

    Two links in that chain have already moved. Energy Transfer’s pipeline to the site is now due February 1, 2027, nearly six months late, after regulators repeatedly denied permits; in August, Bloomberg reported that the route had been changed in response. Separately, New Mexico’s environment department faces a November 23 deadline to rule on the air-quality permit for the fuel-cell system. Neither is a construction problem that more crews or more capital can speed up. Each is a regulatory decision on its own calendar.

    On-site generation is often pitched as a way around years-long waits to connect to the public grid. Jupiter shows the trade-off: it swaps the utility’s interconnection queue for pipeline routing and air permitting. A February 2027 gas date still leaves room before a 2028 opening, but less than before, and if that margin runs out, the force majeure notice is the mechanism that decides who absorbs the wait.

    Who Carries the Timing Risk

    AI data center developers are taking on steep costs to build capacity ahead of demand from customers like OpenAI. A developer’s return depends on the tenant’s payments starting when the building is delivered. A clause letting Oracle defer those payments if 2028 slips shifts the cost of waiting toward the landlord side, here the developer and Blue Owl’s unit, and toward anyone who financed the project against its expected income.

    Blue Owl’s statement that the notice does not change the financial commitments is accurate on its face: deferring a payment is not cancelling it. But for a project funded on expected cash flow, the timing of that cash matters. Until the parties say how long payments could be deferred and on what terms, outsiders cannot size that exposure.

    A Political Flashpoint With a Deadline Attached

    Jupiter 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 critics, according to Bloomberg. The pending air permit ties that debate directly to the timetable.

    Fair questions apply on both sides. Critics’ concerns about gas-fired generation and air quality are exactly what the permit process exists to test, and repeated pipeline permit denials suggest that process has teeth. The companies, for their part, have put confident schedule statements on the record while reserving contractual relief. The November 23 permit decision will be the first hard evidence of which posture the facts support.

    Background

    Stargate is the AI infrastructure initiative that Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank announced with President Donald Trump early in his second term, with the aim of building very large computing campuses in the United States. Project Jupiter in New Mexico is one of its flagship sites. Oracle is the main tenant; it sent the notice to the project’s developer, and Blue Owl Capital, an investment firm, said its unit received it.

    Jupiter’s energy plan relies on fuel cells from Bloom Energy running on natural gas, delivered by a pipeline from Energy Transfer, a pipeline operator. Because the campus makes its own electricity rather than drawing primarily from the grid, its gas supply and air-quality permitting are as important to its opening date as the buildings themselves.

    Sources

    Source: Oracle sends force majeure notice on its New Mexico Stargate data center — TechCrunch, September 24, 2026, reporting Bloomberg’s account of the notice and statements from Oracle and Blue Owl to CNBC.

    Primary sources: Oracle Corporation, Schedule 14A definitive proxy statement (DEF 14A), filed September 25, 2026 — Oracle’s proxy statement, including executive-compensation disclosures.