Who lent Project Jupiter $165 billion?
On the bonds no outside investor bought — and where the money that can actually be lost sits.
Oct 3, 2026 · 9 min read · Every claim links to its document.
A bond is a loan. Someone hands over money, someone promises to pay it back, and the paper in between says who owes whom.
On September 19, 2025, the Doña Ana County Commission voted 4–1 to issue up to $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds for Project Jupiter — the largest bond approval in New Mexico history. So the first question ought to be the simplest one: who lent the money?
The answer is in documents the county posted on its own website. It just isn’t the answer you would expect.
01The purchaser line
The deal closed on November 12, 2025. The county recorded one closing package for each series of bonds, and each package opens with a Bond Purchase Agreement. Every one of those agreements names three parties: the county, which issues the bonds; the company the bonds are for; and the purchaser — the party that buys them. The purchaser is the lender. Here is that line, from all three.
- 2025A$15,000,000,000
- Issued for
Yucca Growth Infrastructure, LLC - Bought by
Yucca Growth Infrastructure Purchaser, LLC - 2025B4 × $6,250,000,000
- Issued for
Red Chiles A, B, C and D, LLC - Bought by
Red Chiles Sub A, B, C and D, LLC - 2025C$124,999,925,000
- Issued for
Green Chile Ventures LLC - Bought by
Oracle America, Inc.
Read the last row again. The $125 billion series is issued for Green Chile Ventures LLC — the name under which an Oracle company registered in New Mexico, the day before the vote. The purchaser is Oracle America, Inc.
The other two rows follow the same pattern. The Red Chiles companies’ bonds were bought by Red Chiles “Sub” companies, and on those papers one person, Tim Kuester, signed for both the buyer and the borrower. Yucca Growth Infrastructure’s bonds were bought by Yucca Growth Infrastructure Purchaser, LLC, signed for by Brannen McElmurray.
Not one of the three series went to an outside investor.
02Why lend money to yourself?
Our first reaction was that we were misreading the documents. We weren’t, and nothing about it is hidden. This is how New Mexico industrial revenue bonds work now. In July 2026 the Legislative Finance Committee — the legislature’s own budget analysts — put it plainly:
“Today, IRBs are generally structured as taxable, privately placed bonds that are frequently purchased by a subsidiary of the beneficiary company itself, meaning the financing component is often incidental to the transaction.”
The bond isn’t the point. The bond is the mechanism: while the county holds title to the property and leases it back to the companies, the property sits outside the tax rolls. That is where the value is. The LFC estimates the tax benefits for this project at up to $3.3 billion — $1.7 billion in state gross receipts tax deductions and $1.6 billion in local gross receipts and property-tax benefits.
It also means the county lent nothing, and owes nothing. The bond opinion in the closing package says the county “has not pledged its faith and credit” to the bonds, which are “payable solely out of the revenues and assets pledged therefor.” If the project fails, no public debt comes due. What the public put into Project Jupiter is the taxes it agreed not to collect.
03Follow the names
If the $165 billion was never really a loan, the next question is whose money is actually at risk. We started with the signatures.
Tim Kuester, who signed for both sides of the Red Chiles bonds, is listed on STACK Infrastructure’s team page as Chief Legal & Administrative Officer, STACK Americas. STACK is the developer building the campus. STACK is owned by Blue Owl Capital.
Until this week, this record said Blue Owl had announced no financing specific to Jupiter. That was wrong. In March 2026, Blue Owl Real Estate Net Lease Trust — a non-listed real estate investment trust sponsored by Blue Owl, which sells its shares every month through a private offering — filed its annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Exhibit 21.1 of that report is the list of the trust’s subsidiaries. On it, in order: Red Chiles Holdings A, LLC. Red Chiles A, LLC. Red Chiles Sub A, LLC. And the same three again for B, C and D.
Those are the companies the 2025B bonds were issued for, and the companies that bought them. The filing does not say how much of them the trust owns, or who else holds a share. The list is the receipt. The percentage is still a hole.
The real borrowing is somewhere else, and it is not in the county’s documents. On September 18, Reuters, citing the Financial Times, reported that about $18 billion in loans tied to the campus were being quoted by syndicate banks, including Santander and Jefferies, at 89 to 91 cents on the dollar. On September 24, a person familiar with Oracle’s force majeure notice told Reuters that Blue Owl has about $3 billion of equity in the project, and that Oracle is responsible for paying the debt costs. Nobody has published the loan agreement. We have not seen it.
04Who kept an exit
In the last week of September, the Columbia Business School economist Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh presented a paper at the Brookings Institution’s fall economics conference about how the AI buildout is being paid for. It is still a conference draft, and it never mentions Jupiter. Its argument is that these deals “transform rather than eliminate risk”: moving data centers into separately financed vehicles raises the borrowing against the buildings even while the tech company’s own books stay light.
The paper’s example is Meta’s Hyperion campus in Louisiana. According to the paper, Blue Owl took 80 percent of it, the venture borrowed against it, and Meta leases it back in four-year terms that it can walk away from at each renewal — paying the difference if the campus later sells for less than an agreed minimum. Meta paid for a door.
Jupiter, as reported, was built the other way. The person who spoke to Reuters said Oracle “cannot terminate the lease under any circumstances,” and that securing power for the site is Oracle’s responsibility under the contract. Oracle’s lever isn’t an exit. It is time. On September 24 it sent the developer a force majeure notice citing the delayed air permit and the delayed gas pipeline.
05What the county holds
So if Oracle’s plans change, what does Doña Ana County actually hold? We went looking for a guarantee, and there is one. It is in the Series 2025C package, signed November 12, 2025, by Green Chile Ventures LLC, at 500 Oracle Parkway.
It guarantees the payments listed in the Community Benefits Agreement, up to $11.4 million. It ends on June 30, 2037, or when those payments are made, whichever comes first.
That is the whole of it. The guaranty does not mention the $12 million a year the companies pay in lieu of property taxes. It does not cover the bonds. It covers the community-benefit payments, and only those.
And the Community Benefits Agreement has a door of its own:
“The Companies may terminate this CBA if all of the Companies abandon the Incentives on or before December 31, 2026.”
Abandoning the incentives would mean giving up the tax break itself — the bonds and the abatement — not leaving the project. Nothing in the record says anyone intends to. But it is a date, and the window is open now. While the agreement stands, if the companies fall short of it, the county’s “sole and exclusive remedy” is to use its rights under the leases.
06What we still can’t see
If we can’t show the document, we don’t have the story yet. Here is what is still missing.
- The executed lease agreements and indentures. The county’s recorded packages don’t include them, and they hold the clawbacks, the payment schedule and the force majeure terms as signed.
- The roughly $18 billion credit agreement, and any lien against the leaseholds.
- Oracle’s lease with its landlord — the 17.9-year term its presenters described to the county, and the force majeure clause it invoked.
- How much of the Red Chiles companies Blue Owl’s trust owns, and which Blue Owl funds hold the reported $3 billion.
- Who owns Yucca Growth Infrastructure Purchaser, LLC.
Each of these is a document. Until it is public, this record says so.
Who lent Project Jupiter $165 billion?
On paper, the companies lent it to themselves, and that was always the point: the bonds are how the tax break works. The money that can actually be lost sits where the county’s paperwork doesn’t reach — in a bank loan nobody has published, in Blue Owl’s equity, and on Oracle’s balance sheet. What the public put in is the taxes it agreed not to collect. What it holds in return is a guarantee of $11.4 million, through 2037.