Wisconsin grid approval threatens Oracle's 2027 AI datacenter deadline
- Oracle's Project Lighthouse AI datacenter in Port Washington, Wisconsin, built by Vantage with Oracle as tenant, could miss its target of delivering capacity to customers in the second half of 2027 because American Transmission Company's grid connection application is still awaiting approval from the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin.
- Research firm Aterio's base case puts partial power at December 2027 and full supply at October 2028, with an extended regulatory review pushing those dates to June 2028 and April 2029; the campus is rated at 902 MW of computing load and 1.3 GW of total electricity demand.
- Oracle could face more than $100 million a year in financing costs to guarantee the Wisconsin campus's power commitments, and ATC plans over $2 billion in transmission projects tied to datacenter developments across Wisconsin; the PSC closed the original case after withdrawing its finding that the application was complete, and ATC refiled in September, restarting the process.
- Oracle sent a force majeure notice to a Blue Owl Capital subsidiary developing Project Jupiter in New Mexico, seeking to defer payments if the campus fails to come online as planned rather than withdraw; Oracle says the development remains on schedule.
- Tencent signed a $7 billion deal to lease around 100,000 AI processors from Oracle, while Oracle reported $55.7 billion in capital expenditures for fiscal 2026 against $67.4 billion in revenue, with fiscal 2027 capex guidance up to $95 billion.
Hacker News opinions
Oracle outsourced all their datacenter builds to contractors that weren't nimble enough to line up backup power. Meta, Google, even SpaceX have internal teams on this and they aren't getting hit by these grid delays.
Being an Oracle customer right now has to feel bad. You keep paying license fees and the money goes into some rickety datacenter scheme instead of better products or support.
Their products would be fine if they spent any of that on UI. There's a whole ecosystem of tools that exists just because Oracle is so slow to fix anything.
I have family in Port Washington and I'm there a lot. Public opposition to this project is intense and growing, and every delay gives local officials another way to hinder it.
If Oracle can't meet these commitments, what are the odds they go bankrupt? That's probably wishful thinking on my part, I'll admit.