SANTA TERESA — Stack Infrastructure, a data-centre developer headquartered in Denver, and its tenant Oracle Corp. opened Project Jupiter to media representatives for a preview tour of the facility, which has been taking shape over the past 13 months across roughly 1,400 acres of industrial terrain situated a short distance north of the Santa Teresa Port of Entry.

Stack Infrastructure's chief operating officer, Mike Casey, described the development in positive terms, pointing to four large buildings taking shape across a campus of considerable scale that will hold servers powering artificial intelligence work for Oracle and OpenAI. Rows of interconnected pipes belonging to a closed-loop cooling apparatus — built to draw thermal energy away from the data centre — were left fully exposed to view. Prefabricated structures on-site, built from corrugated steel arched into half-cylinders, handle both workforce instruction and daily meals.

On the grounds, water retention basins, temperature relief stations, restroom facilities, a concrete batching plant, and laydown yards stacked with building supplies and heavy machinery have all been established.

A group calling itself BorderPlex Digital Assets brought the proposal before the public for the first time in August of the preceding year. Months of talks between county personnel and New Mexico State University specialists had been unfolding under nondisclosure agreements before the arrangement came to public attention. Backed by $500 billion in federal funding, the initiative forms one piece of a broader national push to build out artificial intelligence infrastructure.

By 2025, opposition from residents had taken hold as governing bodies moved ordinances through the legally mandated minimum review window — measures that bundled substantial public financial incentives with commitments from developers for community investments and direct payments to the county. At a series of town hall gatherings that drew pointed exchanges, representatives from BorderPlex and Stack faced community members raising concerns about water and electricity consumption, noise, and local air-quality issues including ozone levels.

According to Casey, the workforce behind the construction totalled close to 4,400 people, a figure that encompassed roughly 1,800 union members, more than 1,200 residents from across New Mexico, and approximately 630 from Doña Ana County alone.

Alterations to the design and unresolved regulatory questions around the data centre's power supply have put the originally announced late-2026 target for the first operational phase in doubt. Flat ground where the on-site power plant — a microgrid rated at 2.45 gigawatts — has yet to break ground indicates how far behind schedule the data centre's energy infrastructure remains.

According to company representatives, the planned installation — described as Bloom Energy's most expansive to date — would place solid oxide fuel cells across a two-storey platform spanning 110 acres, drawing on natural gas through a modular, noncombustion process and supporting a workforce of around 100 people. Responding to questions from reporters, Mahesh Thiagarajan — the Oracle Corp. executive heading Project Jupiter — described the fuel cells as evidence that the project had taken residents' concerns about the data centre's environmental footprint into account.

A natural gas combustion permit request filed by Yucca Growth Infrastructure — the company behind the microgrid project — prompted residents to raise concerns about pollution levels in the surrounding area. The Bloom fuel cell configuration outlined in that May submission would lower emissions compared with the previous proposal, yet the facility's projected annual output of 8.8 million tons of greenhouse gases would still surpass the combined total generated by Albuquerque and Las Cruces — New Mexico's two largest cities by population.

Both the plan itself and the corridor proposed for its supply line have encountered resistance at several regulatory bodies. A public hearing on the air quality permit has yet to take place, while Thiagarajan described the company's position as one of following established guidelines, acting responsibly, and keeping the surrounding community informed through open disclosure of data. A public-facing dashboard tracking emissions figures and related environmental data in real time is among the commitments Oracle has outlined for the period after the project goes live.

Thiagarajan described Project Jupiter as a transformative opportunity for New Mexico's economy, attaching a floor of $13 billion to the state's potential financial return — a figure that no outside organisation has yet reviewed or verified. Pledges of job creation and projected economic activity tied to the facility's operations and workforce formed the basis of his argument.

Among the community-facing obligations Thiagarajan outlined were pledges tied to a $165 billion industrial revenue bond arrangement with the county — alongside other economic development incentives — covering commitments from the developers to broaden hiring from the local workforce.

Opposition from the surrounding area has held firm over the proposed development, which sits on land with a documented record of industrial contamination and unsafe water supplies. Data centre construction has entered the political conversation ahead of elections, with environmental groups and some technology specialists questioning whether the pace of industry growth poses a threat to the emissions progress New Mexico has made.

When asked whether he would personally choose to live near a data centre, Thiagarajan replied that he would have no hesitation in doing so. He also stated that he holds ownership of the land on which the facility is being developed.