Power availability is a constraint to AI growth. That bottleneck can show up in surprising ways.

Just look at what happened to Oracle. It upset the AI apple cart on Thursday, sending a force majeure notice to Stack Infrastructure, the developer of the Project Jupiter AI data center in New Mexico, according to Bloomberg.

Oracle didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. It isn't seeking to exit the data center deal as the main tenant, according to reports, it wants to put off payments if the facility doesn't come online as scheduled in 2028.

An on-time start-up is looking unlikely. The problem is natural gas, which will be used to generate electricity. Pipeline permitting and environmental delays are piling up.

Oracle stock was down 5% in midday trading, while the S&P 500 fell 0.5%.

Shares of power equipment providers were taking it on the chin, too. Shares of Bloom Energy, which supplies fuel cells to the project, were down almost 7%. Shares of natural gas turbine maker GE Vernova fell 1.4%. Shares of Caterpillar, Cummins, Generac, and Woodward, all of which have some AI data center-related business, were down between 1% and 2%.

"The broader lesson is how hard it has become to bring these campuses on," wrote GLJ analyst Gordon Johnson on Thursday. The Jupiter project had the money, tenants, and AI partners. It didn't have the permits. "Bottom line: bearish for turbines and chips."

If things don't get built on time, that's less revenue for the ones selling equipment to massive data center projects.

It's a risk for pricey power-generation equipment stocks. Caterpillar shares trade for about 26 times earnings expected over the coming 12 months, up from a historic average of closer to 15 times. (Cat stock did trade for almost 40 times earnings earlier this year.) Vernova shares fetch about 36 times earnings, a premium to the S&P's 19 times multiple.

Still, delays have their silver lining. They support AI pricing and make existing capacity more valuable. They also slow down spending, allowing AI developers to fund more building from current cash flow, easing pressure on debt and equity markets.

The market is rewarding some of that existing capacity. Shares of neocloud service provider Nebius were up 6% in midday trading. CoreWeave shares, however, were down 0.4%. Shares of SpaceX, which rents its own AI computing capacity to the likes of Google and Anthropic, were down 0.4% as well.