Research the project-finance and construction loans behind Oracle-linked data centers…

Oracle’s Stargate campuses are financed off the company’s balance sheet through developer special-purpose vehicles, with Oracle as the long-term tenant and OpenAI as the subtenant. The debt is large, short-tenor on the bank side, and increasingly hard to distribute. The only widely reported secondary-market level is on the New Mexico loan. Apollo is not a lender on these site financings.

How the structure works

The template is the same across sites. A developer (Blue Owl’s STACK, a Blue Owl–Crusoe joint venture, Vantage, or Related Digital) owns the campus through an SPV, borrows construction money, and leases the finished building to Oracle for roughly 15 years. Oracle’s lease payments are what service the debt. The loans themselves do not sit on Oracle’s balance sheet, which is why banks and insurers underwrote them against a lease rather than against Oracle’s corporate credit directly.

That separation is now the pressure point. Single-tenant and single-counterparty caps filled up as Oracle’s own rating slid to BBB-, one notch above junk, after an S&P cut in July 2026. Banks that arranged the loans at tight spreads cannot always resell them at par. Newer paper has had to clear at wider margins, and one campus was refinanced as a long project bond because banks would not hold another construction loan.

Site-by-site financing

Abilene, Texas — Crusoe, Blue Owl, Primary Digital Infrastructure. This is the original Stargate flagship, on the Lancium Clean Campus.

• January 2025: JPMorgan provided a $2.3 billion construction loan for the first 206 MW, two-building phase. Newmark arranged it. The sponsors had formed a $3.4 billion joint venture. Oracle had a long-term lease on the buildings. [web:17] [web:23] [web:21]
• May 2025: a JPMorgan-led consortium provided $7.1 billion for phase two — six more buildings, taking the campus to eight buildings and 1.2 GW — inside a $15 billion joint venture. Newmark arranged that loan as well. [web:15] [web:10]
• The Financial Times later described Blue Owl as majority owner, with about $3 billion of equity and roughly $10 billion borrowed from JPMorgan, repaid by Oracle’s 15-year lease. A person close to the deal put Blue Owl’s targeted return as high as 25 percent. The Wall Street Journal separately put Abilene construction loans at about $10 billion. JPMorgan has said it originated $9.6 billion across two Abilene construction loans as lead left, sole underwriter, and sole structuring agent. Those figures overlap; they are not additive. [web:9] [web:8] [web:95]

Public pricing on the Abilene loans was not disclosed. An adjacent expansion of roughly 600–700 MW was not financed under an Oracle lease. Bloomberg reported in March 2026 that Oracle and OpenAI walked away after talks dragged on financing and OpenAI’s changing needs; Microsoft then agreed to lease about 700 MW (a later Crusoe statement cited about 900 MW) from Crusoe, with the first building expected powered by mid-2027. Oracle said claims that planned capacity at the existing Abilene site was delayed were inaccurate, and a source told Reuters there were no changes to OpenAI’s existing Oracle agreements. This is a reported tenant substitution on an expansion, not a confirmed construction-loan default or force majeure. [web:125] [web:128] [web:132] [web:134]

Shackelford County, Texas (“Frontier”) and Port Washington, Wisconsin (“Lighthouse”) — Vantage. These are one financing package, not two unrelated loans.

• JPMorgan and Mitsubishi UFJ (MUFG) led a $38 billion debt package, split as about $23.25 billion for the Texas campus and $14.75 billion for Wisconsin, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg in October 2025. Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. (SMBC), and Société Générale were allocated portions after the first underwriter round. [web:62] [web:11]
• Structure, as reported: senior secured, four-year maturity with two one-year extension options, priced around 2.5 percentage points over the benchmark (SOFR). Interest-only during construction, then amortizing once operations begin. [web:62] [web:3]
• The Financial Times reported in February 2026 that the $38 billion Texas/Wisconsin facilities and the $18 billion New Mexico campus — at least $56 billion in total — had received investment-grade ratings, and that more than a dozen banks had lent against Oracle’s lease at SOFR plus 2.5 percent. TD Cowen, in a January 26, 2026 note, said borrowing costs on newer, not-yet-sold Oracle-linked data-center debt had widened to 3 to 4.5 percentage points over SOFR. [web:3]
• Distribution was slow. Business Insider reported in January 2026 that JPMorgan had seen diminishing interest in the tail of the syndication, while a person familiar said the projects were fully financed. The Wall Street Journal reported in April 2026 that Vantage said the loans were largely syndicated in the fourth quarter of 2025, with more than 50 lenders, and were expected to close in the second quarter of 2026. The Financial Times reported in May 2026 that lenders including JPMorgan and MUFG had spent more than six months distributing the $38 billion, that some banks sought to sell pieces at a discount to non-bank buyers, and that banks were sounding out investors on significant-risk-transfer structures to move the riskiest slices. No public secondary-market quote (in cents on the dollar) was found for the Vantage loans specifically. [web:59] [web:8] [web:71]

Frontier is a Vantage campus of about 1.4 GW. Lighthouse is the Port Washington campus, commonly described as roughly 0.9–1.3 GW of load and about $15 billion of project investment, with Vantage guiding to full buildout in 2028. [web:55] [web:43]

Doña Ana County, New Mexico — Project Jupiter, STACK Infrastructure (Blue Owl) and BorderPlex. This is the loan that has actually traded, or at least been quoted, in stressed territory.

• Bloomberg reported on November 7, 2025 that about 20 banks were providing a roughly $18 billion project-finance loan. Administrative agents: SMBC, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, and MUFG. Retail syndication commitments were due in late November 2025. [web:7]
• Reported terms: SOFR plus 2.5 percent, four-year maturity with two one-year extensions. [web:44] [web:3]
• Blue Owl equity is about $3 billion. A person familiar with the terms told Reuters that Blue Owl earns a lower return during construction, stepping up once the campus is complete. Other reporting puts the construction-stage yield at about 9 percent, rising to about 11 percent at completion. That is a different, and lower, figure than the “up to 25 percent” target reported for Abilene. [web:12] [web:36]
• The $165 billion figure attached to Jupiter is a local industrial-revenue-bond tax structure (power, buildings, and tenant equipment), not the construction loan. The cash project financing that has been reported is the $18 billion of bank debt plus roughly $3 billion of Blue Owl equity. [web:36] [web:101]
• Secondary market: the Financial Times, cited by Reuters on September 18, 2026, reported that syndicate banks including Santander and Jefferies were quoting the loans at 89 to 91 cents on the dollar, and that efforts to sell the debt had stalled, leaving those banks holding more than planned. The package had been investment-grade when arranged. No exchange print was published; these are private quotes. [web:67] [web:4]

Saline Township, Michigan (“The Barn”) — Related Digital. This is the deal Blue Owl did not do, and the one that had to be rebuilt as a bond.

• The Financial Times reported on December 17, 2025, citing three people familiar, that Blue Owl would not back a roughly $10 billion financing and equity investment for the 1 GW campus after negotiations stalled. Sources said lenders wanted stricter lease and debt terms because of Oracle’s debt load and AI spending, and that Blue Owl viewed the Michigan leases as less favorable than the ones it had structured elsewhere. A person familiar told CNBC that Blue Owl pulled out over unfavorable debt terms, repayment structure, and the risk that local politics would delay construction. Oracle’s spokesperson said Related Digital “selected the best equity partner from a competitive group of options, which in this instance was not Blue Owl,” and that equity negotiations were on schedule. Related Digital called the claim that Blue Owl walked away “unequivocally false.” Blackstone was reported to be in talks but had not signed. Label: reported withdrawal from talks, with an explicit company dispute over the “walked away” framing. [web:9] [web:5] [web:34]
• The replacement closed in late April 2026 as a $16 billion package, not a bank construction loan. Bank of America sold $14 billion of 144A senior secured notes maturing in 2045, with a 7.5 percent coupon, priced at 98.75 cents on the dollar. PIMCO bought about $10 billion. Blackstone contributed about $2 billion of equity; Related Digital supplied the rest of the equity. Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo advised Related Digital. Related Digital and Blackstone announced the financing on April 24, 2026, subject to customary closing conditions. One account described six years of interest-only payments followed by amortization. Investors had pushed for more than 100 basis points over Oracle’s 2040 corporate bonds and for removal of a proposed early-call option. Banks had retreated; a bond fund anchored the deal. [web:115] [web:119] [web:35] [web:13]

Apollo, Goldman, and who is actually in the stack

Apollo is not a reported lender or equity sponsor on Abilene, Vantage’s Texas or Wisconsin campuses, Project Jupiter, or the Michigan campus. Its Oracle-related role, as of early October 2026, is separate: the Wall Street Journal reported that Oracle is negotiating with Apollo and Goldman Sachs on an off-balance-sheet vehicle that would buy AI chips for about a gigawatt of capacity and lease them to Oracle. No size or close was reported. Apollo’s $35 billion chip financing with Blackstone, announced in June 2026, backs Anthropic’s lease of Broadcom-related chips, not an Oracle data-center site. [web:90] [web:86] [web:89]

Goldman Sachs is in the site stack as an administrative agent on the $18 billion New Mexico loan and as an allocated underwriter on the $38 billion Vantage package, and as an advisor (with Wells Fargo) to Related Digital on Michigan. JPMorgan led Abilene and co-led the Vantage package. MUFG co-led Vantage and is an administrative agent on New Mexico. SMBC and BNP Paribas are administrative agents on New Mexico; SMBC was also in the Vantage underwriter group. Bank of America structured Michigan. Santander and Jefferies are the banks named as stuck long the New Mexico loan in secondary quotes. [web:7] [web:62] [web:67] [web:115]

Pullbacks, renegotiations, and delays

The pattern is not a wave of defaults. It is a syndication and documentation problem that got worse as Oracle’s credit and local permitting both deteriorated.

• Michigan equity: Blue Owl did not proceed (December 2025, reported, disputed in framing). The project was re-cut from a bank construction loan into a 2045 project bond and closed in April 2026 only after PIMCO took about $10 billion. [web:9] [web:41] [web:119]
• Vantage $38 billion: months of syndication against counterparty caps; some holders reportedly willing to sell at a discount; SRT structures explored. Vantage said distribution to more than 50 lenders was successful and a second-quarter 2026 close was expected. No public cents-on-the-dollar quote was found. [web:8] [web:71]
• New Mexico $18 billion: syndication stalled; private quotes at 89–91 cents as of September 18, 2026. [web:67]
• Abilene expansion: Oracle/OpenAI did not take the additional buildings; Microsoft did. Reported. The financed 1.2 GW campus was not described as cancelled. [web:132] [web:125]
• Pricing regime shift: the early Stargate construction loans cleared around SOFR plus 250 basis points. By late January 2026, unsold Oracle-linked project debt was being talked at SOFR plus 300 to 450 basis points. Michigan’s bond, a different instrument, cleared at a 7.5 percent coupon to 2045. [web:3] [web:119]

Force majeure and construction disputes

Each item below is labeled by how it was established.

Project Jupiter force majeure — reported, not independently confirmed by a filed document, and not denied. On September 24, 2026, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar, that Oracle sent a force majeure notice to Blue Owl’s STACK Infrastructure. The reported purpose was to preserve the right to defer payments if the campus misses a 2028 online date, not to terminate the lease. Oracle did not confirm the notice in those words. Spokesperson Michael Egbert said the project “remains on our planned schedule,” and that force-majeure notices “are commonplace in developments of this scale” and “do not, by themselves, establish a project delay.” STACK said Blue Owl, STACK, and Oracle “remain fully aligned” and that the notice “does not change the financial commitments.” Reuters, citing a person familiar, said the program is being delayed by a year and that Oracle invoked force majeure because of delays securing power. The Financial Times, citing people familiar, reported that even if rent is deferred, Oracle still owes a “carry cost” covering lender interest and a set equity return, for up to three years if the first phase is not ready by the first half of 2027, and that Oracle cannot terminate the lease. Label: reported (multiple outlets, people familiar; company statements acknowledge the notice category without confirming a delay). [web:47] [web:49] [web:12] [web:50]

The underlying power problem is documented in regulatory reporting, separate from the contractual notice. New Mexico’s State Land Office denied Energy Transfer a pipeline right-of-way twice; the targeted in-service date slipped to February 1, 2027. A state air permit for the Bloom Energy fuel-cell microgrid (up to about 2.45 GW) has a decision deadline of November 23, 2026. Bloomberg reported on October 8, 2026, citing people familiar, that Oracle is considering trucking compressed natural gas to Jupiter so early stages can start before the pipeline is in service, and that it has already used trucked gas for more than a year at a Salt Lake City-area site and for early work at the Shackelford County campus. Oracle did not comment. Label on trucking at Jupiter: reported, not confirmed by the company. [web:53] [web:36] [web:105]

Wisconsin collateral lawsuit — confirmed filing, then withdrawn; not a construction or lender dispute. Oracle sued the Wisconsin Public Service Commission on June 19, 2026, over a rule requiring very large customers rated below A- to post collateral for new generation. Oracle said the rule could require more than $7 billion of security at an annual cost that could exceed $100 million. Oracle voluntarily dropped the suit in August 2026. A separate resident lawsuit over Port Washington’s tax-increment district was dismissed in September 2026. We Energies has said the campus remains on schedule. An infrastructure-data firm, Aterio, published an analysis on September 30, 2026 arguing that a restarted transmission review creates a material risk that meaningful load arrives closer to mid-2028 than Oracle’s second-half 2027 guidance. That is an analyst view, not a force majeure claim or a lender dispute. [web:76] [web:75] [web:57] [web:83]

Abilene financing walk-away — reported, and limited to an expansion. No force majeure notice involving Oracle, Crusoe, Blue Owl, or lenders on the financed 1.2 GW campus was found in public reporting. The dispute that was reported is the failed expansion lease, described above.

Michigan — no force majeure found. The documented fight was over equity and debt terms in late 2025, resolved by a different capital structure in April 2026. Construction was reported underway by the time financing was announced. [web:41] [web:115]

Flooding at Jupiter — reported, parties say no schedule impact. Flooding reached the site around September 30, 2026. Oracle and STACK said in a joint statement that no critical infrastructure was damaged and the schedule was unchanged. [web:54]

What this means for anyone underwriting the next campus

The early deals worked because a lease to an investment-grade Oracle, plus an IG rating on a construction loan, let project-finance banks syndicate at SOFR plus 250 basis points and get the risk off their books. That channel is clogged. Counterparty caps, a BBB- tenant, and local permit risk on power are now priced in three different places: wider talked spreads on unsold loans, a 9 to 11 point discount on the one loan that has been quoted, and a 7.5 percent, 19-year bond that only cleared because PIMCO took most of it.

The contractual fine print matters more than the headline lease. On Jupiter, reported terms say Oracle cannot walk away, still covers debt service via a carry cost during a delay, and may only defer rent — while Blue Owl’s equity yield is lower until completion, so a year of delay hits the sponsor’s IRR even if lenders are kept current. That is why a force majeure notice that both sides call routine still moved the loan quotes and, according to Reuters, chilled other OpenAI-linked financings. Anyone competing for the next Oracle or OpenAI campus should assume bank construction loans at SOFR plus 250 basis points are no longer the base case, that equity partners will reopen lease terms if Oracle’s rating or local politics worsen, and that power permits — not the building loan — are the event that can reopen who pays during a delay.

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Recent Findings Supplement (October 2026)

Project Jupiter (New Mexico) financing and force majeure developments dominate recent reporting. Oracle issued a force majeure notice in September 2026 to a Blue Owl Capital unit (STACK Infrastructure, the developer) over power supply delays at the ~1,400-acre, up to 2.45 GW campus (part of the Stargate/OpenAI effort). The notice seeks to protect against or defer rent obligations if the project misses its 2028 target due to issues like pipeline rerouting (after state regulator rejections and local opposition), permitting hurdles, and related infrastructure lags.[1][2]

The ~$18 billion syndicated construction loan facility (arranged late 2025/early 2026 by a group of ~20 banks led by BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs, with MUFG and SMBC also involved) has faced secondary-market pressure. It has been quoted at 89–91 cents on the dollar in mid-to-late September 2026 reporting, with syndication stalling and lenders including Santander and Jefferies reportedly holding larger positions than planned amid concerns over Oracle’s leverage, credit profile (S&P cut to BBB- in July 2026), and project timelines. Blue Owl has approximately $3 billion in equity invested; the broader project has been referenced with planned investment around $165 billion.[3][4][5]

Parties have stated they remain aligned and that the notice does not alter ultimate financial commitments (reported status). Oracle has explored workarounds such as trucked compressed natural gas (CNG) to enable partial early operations, with pipeline in-service now targeted for February 2027. The loans trade at a discount comparable to (or slightly better than) Oracle’s own bonds in some analyses.[6][7]

Texas and Wisconsin Oracle-leased projects show lender distribution challenges. A group of banks including JPMorgan, MUFG, Morgan Stanley, and SMBC has spent more than six months attempting to distribute or offload portions of an approximately $38 billion construction debt package tied to these sites. Some lenders have explored sales to non-bank buyers at a discount to reduce exposure, reflecting broader caution on holding large AI-related construction loans.[8]

Michigan site updates remain largely tied to late-2025 reporting with limited new post-April 2026 developments. Blue Owl declined to back the planned ~$10 billion Saline Township project after debt-term negotiations stalled (concerns cited included shifting market sentiment on AI spending and Oracle’s debt load). Oracle disputed characterizations of a “walk-away,” stating its partner (Related Digital) selected another equity partner from a competitive process; Blackstone was reported in talks as a potential replacement but had not committed as of the reports. No major new financing announcements or renegotiations for this site appear in the most recent sources.[4][9]

Broader lender and market dynamics reflect tightening terms and secondary-market activity. Across AI data center debt, lenders are demanding higher yields, stricter milestone protections, delay-draw structures, and greater emphasis on permits/community support before committing or advancing funds. Some banks (e.g., references to Société Générale and MUFG) have stepped back from certain deals. Secondary trading of Oracle-linked project debt at discounts has contributed to market ripples, with analysts noting impacts on pricing and sentiment. Oracle has separately pursued new large-scale debt arrangements (e.g., with Apollo and Goldman Sachs) for AI chip financing via off-balance-sheet structures.[10][1]

Crusoe/Abilene and other sites (e.g., Vantage mentions are sparse) have fewer new loan-specific updates. Recent focus has been more on Crusoe equity raises (e.g., portions of a $3.9 billion Series F closing in September 2026) and operational/land filings than on fresh construction loan details or disputes. Earlier financing (such as the JPMorgan-led $7.1 billion Abilene facility) predates or lacks significant new post-April reporting in the results.[11]

No confirmed force majeure-triggered payment defaults or major renegotiations beyond the reported Jupiter notice and general tightening; most items are reported (with some elements like exact trading levels based on banker/investor quotes). Wisconsin-specific collateral disputes (Oracle lawsuit over a potential $7 billion bill) and Oracle’s overall debt levels (~$125–169 billion range across reports) appear in context but add limited new project-finance specifics.[8]

These shifts indicate lenders are reallocating risk more conservatively on Oracle-linked and similar AI infrastructure deals, with secondary-market pricing and force majeure mechanics serving as key signals of caution amid power and permitting bottlenecks.