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?
Oracle is in a pretty bad situation, it’s a desperate move. Their debt is rated just above junk since July. They are completely over leveraged. There is a reason the share price has been trending down so much
Its funny how before Oracle got in everybody was guessing who'd be swimming most naked when the tide goes out. CoreWeave obviously, but OpenAI likely as well depending on whom you'd ask.
With the contracts that "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison" jumped on its without a doubt Oracle going down second if not first.
He's just gambling because he's old and feeling bold.
There's certainly been some small attacks in the EU+ caused by Russia, and many more attributed to Russia, and of course Ukraine, which is not in the EU and never has been, is bombing Russian cities in retaliation for the massive invasion and continued occupation Russia launched some years ago.
What makes to possible collapse of Oracle worse is that they have an actual business too that is currently getting cannibalized to feed the AI projects. If coreweave fails that is bad but oracle failing will be worse.
We have to account for the fact that Oracle is a law firm with a software branch attached to it.
Investors who (rightfully) see this "force majeure" claim as bullshit will have to drag Oracle through court, and Oracle probably counts on this taking years to get settled.
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.
I thought fuel cells were an energy storage system, not an energy generation system. Surely it’s cheaper to just connect the data center to the generation directly (either by upgrading the grid to handle it or building generators nearby).
Fuel cells are an electricity generation method. They oxidize fuels (methane, hydrogen) at low temperature, electrochemically, without combustion—going directly from fuel to electrons.
This would have been simply a natural gas power plant, of a different type.
That was not my understanding. Unless this installation was supposed to be producing fuel on site somehow, fuel cells are a mechanism for turning fuel into electricity.
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?
Just this month, I tried to hook it up to a modern .NET app with the latest Oracle client and discovered that if you cancel a transaction, the connection enters a broken state and is returned to the connection pool, "infecting it". After a half a dozen of those, the whole app server just dies with endless cancellation related exceptions. This isn't even the only such bug, apparently there's a whole family of pool-corruption bugs that have workaround config settings and everything!
This was with version 23.26.301 which suggests that they've had a lot of major releases, bug fixes, etc... but basic functionality like "connect successfully to the database server every time" is totally broken and has been for many years.
The issue tracker forums have tumbleweeds rolling through them and play the sound of wolves howling in the distance to provide just the right kind of "what are you still doing here?" ambiance.
That should just be illegal. The right to measure or to publish things is not about their software, it's a personal right, so Obstacle shouldn't be able to remove your right in their license agreement.
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.
In an actual Ponzi scheme yes. The AI bubble isn’t a Ponzi scheme. Infra investment ahead of revenue is fairly standard in tech and not inherently bad. However if the revenue to pay for all that infra doesn’t materialize then you have a bubble implosion. Right now while the revenue and growth numbers for AI revenue would be incredibly impressive by most standards, there’re still a drop in the bucket relative to what’s needed to stop this whole house of cards from crashing down.
https://archive.ph/1JVq2
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?
Oracle is in a pretty bad situation, it’s a desperate move. Their debt is rated just above junk since July. They are completely over leveraged. There is a reason the share price has been trending down so much
Its funny how before Oracle got in everybody was guessing who'd be swimming most naked when the tide goes out. CoreWeave obviously, but OpenAI likely as well depending on whom you'd ask.
With the contracts that "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison" jumped on its without a doubt Oracle going down second if not first.
He's just gambling because he's old and feeling bold.
I had that exact thought when SoftBank got involved :)
It’s like if I see the EU announce a large investment in AI, always makes me nervous given how we are often late to the party
EU annonced war with Russia by 2030, except it is already bombing russian cities directly.
wtf are you on about?
There's certainly been some small attacks in the EU+ caused by Russia, and many more attributed to Russia, and of course Ukraine, which is not in the EU and never has been, is bombing Russian cities in retaliation for the massive invasion and continued occupation Russia launched some years ago.
He's only 82, and he's got a billion-dollar nonprofit dedicated to keeping him healthy. Don't count on him being on the way out.
s/healthy/alive/
Even a billionaire doesn’t have many _good_ years left after 80.
not yet anyway
What makes to possible collapse of Oracle worse is that they have an actual business too that is currently getting cannibalized to feed the AI projects. If coreweave fails that is bad but oracle failing will be worse.
We have to account for the fact that Oracle is a law firm with a software branch attached to it.
Investors who (rightfully) see this "force majeure" claim as bullshit will have to drag Oracle through court, and Oracle probably counts on this taking years to get settled.
And there’s a good chance of inappropriate protective action from the US government.
Agreed, and most of these leases explicitly carve permitting out of force majeure since it's the tenant's job to get them.
I'm very curious what happens now to the several gigawatts of fuel cells, that this project supposedly purchased to supply power.
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.
I thought fuel cells were an energy storage system, not an energy generation system. Surely it’s cheaper to just connect the data center to the generation directly (either by upgrading the grid to handle it or building generators nearby).
Fuel cells are an electricity generation method. They oxidize fuels (methane, hydrogen) at low temperature, electrochemically, without combustion—going directly from fuel to electrons.
This would have been simply a natural gas power plant, of a different type.
That was not my understanding. Unless this installation was supposed to be producing fuel on site somehow, fuel cells are a mechanism for turning fuel into electricity.
https://www.bloomenergy.com/technology/
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
I don't love Oracle, but they made so much money selling the best relational database on the planet for 40 years.
OracleDB, MongoDB and PHP over IIS natively on a single Windows machine running on Azure. Delicious.
"The best", but you'll be sued if you publish benchmarks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_DeWitt#DeWitt_Clause
Every time I use Oracle, I regret it.
Just this month, I tried to hook it up to a modern .NET app with the latest Oracle client and discovered that if you cancel a transaction, the connection enters a broken state and is returned to the connection pool, "infecting it". After a half a dozen of those, the whole app server just dies with endless cancellation related exceptions. This isn't even the only such bug, apparently there's a whole family of pool-corruption bugs that have workaround config settings and everything!
This was with version 23.26.301 which suggests that they've had a lot of major releases, bug fixes, etc... but basic functionality like "connect successfully to the database server every time" is totally broken and has been for many years.
The issue tracker forums have tumbleweeds rolling through them and play the sound of wolves howling in the distance to provide just the right kind of "what are you still doing here?" ambiance.
That should just be illegal. The right to measure or to publish things is not about their software, it's a personal right, so Obstacle shouldn't be able to remove your right in their license agreement.
We must have extremely different definitions of what constitutes "best" or even "good"
Oracle's business model is to get government contracts. It's a whole special business model unrelated to software.
Makes sense and it shows
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.
When new money pays old that's a ponzie scheme
In an actual Ponzi scheme yes. The AI bubble isn’t a Ponzi scheme. Infra investment ahead of revenue is fairly standard in tech and not inherently bad. However if the revenue to pay for all that infra doesn’t materialize then you have a bubble implosion. Right now while the revenue and growth numbers for AI revenue would be incredibly impressive by most standards, there’re still a drop in the bucket relative to what’s needed to stop this whole house of cards from crashing down.
You're calling the stock market a Ponzi scheme?
You can put solar and wind everywhere. I would sue god if there is no sunshine at night!
Or just pause training at night