Oracle sends force majeure notice as $288B of leases wait to start

Oracle’s own quarterly filing had already described the clock that a force majeure notice would stop. The 10-Q it filed on September 11 discloses $288 billion of additional lease commitments, substantially all tied to data center arrangements, that were not reflected on the balance sheet as of August 31, 2026. Those leases are “generally expected to commence between the second quarter of fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2029”, the filing says. Thirteen days later Oracle sent a force majeure notice on a campus due to open in 2028.

The notice went to STACK Infrastructure, the Blue Owl Capital owned developer of Project Jupiter in New Mexico, as Bloomberg first reported and CNBC confirmed. Force majeure clauses excuse a party from contractual obligations when events outside its control get in the way. Oracle isn’t trying to walk away as the campus’s main tenant, according to Bloomberg’s sources cited by TechCrunch. The notice would instead let it delay payments if the site misses that 2028 date.

That is the same mechanism the filing describes, because a lease that hasn’t commenced isn’t a liability yet. Oracle carries $34.6 billion of operating lease liabilities and $9.2 billion of finance lease liabilities on its books. The $288 billion queued behind them is about 6.6 times that combined total, by our calculation from the filing.

Oracle, as of August 31, 2026	Amount
Operating lease liabilities	$34.6B
Finance lease liabilities	$9.2B
Lease commitments not yet on the balance sheet	$288B
Q1 FY2027 capital expenditures	$28.5B
Q1 FY2026 capital expenditures	$8.5B
Remaining performance obligations	$664B

Oracle says that nothing has changed. “Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule,” the company told CNBC. “We are fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward.” Blue Owl added that the notice “does not change the financial commitments to this multi-year project”.

Force-majeure notices are commonplace in developments of this scale and are often used to preserve contractual rights among project partners. They do not, by themselves, establish a project delay or change delivery expectations.

Michael Egbert, Oracle spokesperson, via Business Insider

Analysts read that timing differently, though. RBC Capital Markets analyst Rishi Jaluria wrote that the notice “signals the company’s own risk assessment on execution has shifted enough to warrant legal cover”. Evercore called it “a pretty sensible move” and said it “is not an indication that this project is going away”. William Blair expects limited near-term damage, because Jupiter isn’t forecast to contribute revenue in the current fiscal year.

But the immediate obstacles are physical rather than financial. The campus is designed to handle 2.45 gigawatts and is meant to run on gas-powered fuel cells from Bloom Energy, so a reliable gas supply sits at the center of its schedule. An Energy Transfer pipeline meant to feed the site slipped nearly six months, to February 1, 2027, after regulators repeatedly denied permits. A separate air quality permit for the fuel cells is still pending, and New Mexico’s environment department faces a November 23 deadline to rule.

Those dates matter more than the quarter’s headline numbers, because the backlog only converts when concrete and gas turbines do. Oracle’s remaining performance obligations reached $664 billion at the end of August, up from $455 billion a year earlier. Only about 13% of that is expected to land as revenue in the next twelve months, with 37% in months 13 to 36 and 34% in months 37 to 60. A campus opening in calendar 2028 sits in the middle of that curve.

Meanwhile the spending is already booked, so the gap is widening. Capital expenditures hit $28.5 billion in the quarter, against $8.5 billion a year before, and free cash flow came in at negative $5.4 billion. Oracle also sold $20 billion of common stock through an at-the-market program during the quarter, a financing route that drew attention when Larry Ellison cancelled his own $7.5B share sale plan in September.

A single element falling out of place can expose financial backers and insurers to losses.

Semafor, on the loans, insurance policies and milestone-triggered payments behind hyperscaler builds

That fragility is the point Semafor pressed, and it echoes what happened when the AI compute shortage moved from chips to power. Oracle shares fell more than 3% on Thursday and were down about 4% in the afternoon, per CNBC and Business Insider respectively. The Financial Times has reported that $18 billion of debt tied to the data center is trading at stressed levels, CNBC said. So the next checkpoint is November 23, and the one after that is February 1, 2027.