Borrowers Seek Force Majeure Protection Against AI Infrastructure Delays as Industry Faces Power Bottleneck

Oracle and other major borrowers are invoking and negotiating force majeure clauses to protect themselves from financial penalties if AI data center projects miss deadlines—a dramatic shift that underscores how power supply, permitting, and infrastructure delays have become the primary obstacles to the AI buildout. Oracle sent a force majeure notice to developer Stack Infrastructure in September 2026, signaling it could delay rent payments by up to three years if Project Jupiter, a $165 billion AI data center campus in New Mexico, fails to start operations as scheduled due to power infrastructure delays. The 2.45-gigawatt fuel-cell power plant and the Green Chile natural gas pipeline serving the site have faced regulatory hurdles, with the air quality permit decision pushed to late November and pipeline commissioning delayed to February 2027.