Oracle on the hook to pay data centre investors even if site has no electricity

Betelbuddy

https://archive.ph/1JVq2

runeks

> The tech group has issued a force majeure notice related to the power supply to the project developer, a unit of Blue Owl Capital, after the site ran into permitting delays after rising local opposition. Since when can failing to get a permit be considered force majeure ? Doesn't majeure specifically denote something large scale and out of anyone's control, such as a hurricane?

hn3ufz62f7

Agreed, and most of these leases explicitly carve permitting out of force majeure since it's the tenant's job to get them.

peri-cl

I'm very curious what happens now to the several gigawatts of fuel cells, that this project supposedly purchased to supply power. > "Oracle signed a deal with solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) developer Bloom last year for 1.8GW of power, expanding it to 2.8GW of capacity in April." https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/new-mexico-regula... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_Energy I was surprised to read we're already building fuel cell power plants on this scale (this is a first of its kind project—by far this startup's largest customer). I didn't realize the tech was that mature. Now I'm left wondering if they actually ever intended to, or whether this was some kind of circular financial-engineering vaporware.

gchamonlive

A too-big-to-fail about to fail certain it'll be bailed out? Another comment* raised a question about investments in fuel cells that could have been just for show. Are they doing max damage to leech as much cash as possible before implosion or it's just... I mean, it's oracle it's a mystery to me how they make so much money with selling crapware, so it might just be business as usual? * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49842884

cmiles8

The AI bubble has built a giant interconnected web of commitments backed by a debt bomb. It all flows back to the ability of net new cash to flow in to pay for all this, not just VC funding and circular vendor financing. We’re seeing the early signs of that starting to all implode.

be8e9dmrro

You can put solar and wind everywhere. I would sue god if there is no sunshine at night!

Havoc

Oracle is on the hook for god damn everything. If AI implodes they'll be a smoking crater

jrochkind1

"Oracle said force majeure notices did not establish a project delay or change delivery expectations." You keep saying those words, I do not think they mean what you think they mean. Like, if Oracle is trying to get out of contractual obligations due to "force majeure", but claiming it doesn't mean there's any change to delivery expectations... I don't think that's going to work very well for them in court if someone takes it there? (Although it maybe wouldn't have anyway, so they maybe don't care about adding BS on top of BS?)

ChrisArchitect

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49830037

jpster

I thought force majeure is for weather catastrophes, natural disasters, terrorism, “acts of God”. Not for “we didn’t get the permits”.

briffle

Great to know that everyone's RAM, GPU, and SSD costs have skyrocketed over the last year, so that companies like Oracle can fill giant buildings full of RAM and SSD's (and GPU's) and then not even be able to turn them on..

bithammerthunde

Oh the schadenfreude. Oracle sipping it's own medicine.