A months-long look inside our investigation of Kevin O’Leary’s Utah data center scandal

Meta description: Timeline of Kevin O'Leary's Wonder Valley data center in Utah, from early January state talks to local backlash that stopped the nine-gigawatt Stratos project.

Tags: Kevin O'Leary, Wonder Valley, Stratos, Utah data centers, AI infrastructure

Featured image: Abstract data-center grid, no people, no logos, no text.

Kevin O'Leary's Wonder Valley data center in Utah, officially called Stratos, has become one of the clearest examples of how AI infrastructure can collide with local politics. In a Decoder conversation, longtime The Verge features writer Josh Dzieza said months of reporting showed that the proposed 40,000-acre AI campus, billed as the world's biggest data center and set to use nine gigawatts of power, more than double the average power usage of the entire state of Utah, was stopped by a backlash that began before residents had formal notice. The name Wonder Valley references O'Leary's nickname on Shark Tank.

Background: A Quiet State-Level Search for Land

The Stratos project began well before its public reveal. Dzieza said O'Leary started asking around at the state level with the governor in early January. By January and February, the pitch moved from the governor's office to MIDA, the Military Installation Development Authority, during a state-to-state competition in which developers ask states for land, easier permitting, and tax breaks. MIDA began as a way to put unused military property to economic use and return taxes to the state, some of which can fund military developments. MIDA also has a luxury ski resort that gives veterans discounts, but its key power in this case was its ability to override local land use and act like a municipal government inside a project area.

To establish such an area, MIDA's board had to ratify it, all landowners in the area had to consent, and the local government, the county, also had to consent. Dzieza said only a small group knew early: remote-valley property owners, some people in the state government at that one agency, and a few real estate developers. He also found that many data center projects remain on paper or in speculation, making real plans harder to identify than expected. Dzieza's work at The Verge has involved disappearing for long periods and returning with 15,000-word features that features editor Kevin Nguyen helps edit down.

Late-April Reveal and a Rushed Approval Path

By late April, O'Leary was publicly talking about the giant Utah data center on Fox, and that was the first time most people in the county and state heard of it. Dzieza said MIDA had already approved the project, but the county had not. The county commissioners did not know about it until about a month before the public announcement. In late March, they began hearing rumors that a data center was coming. After asking around, they learned the state had essentially forgotten to tell them but needed approval quickly.

The next weeks accelerated the conflict. County commissioners met in late April, word started to trickle out, and MIDA voted to approve the project two days later. Over that weekend, there were two public meetings, local coverage, and social-media chatter. Residents heard about the plan at coffee shops, grocery stores, and on Facebook. Dzieza noted that social media is already full of data center backlash stories, so people quickly connected the phrase "nine gigawatts" with a large project arriving in their backyard.

Backlash, Fox News, and the Foxconn Comparison

The reaction was immediate. People organized to attend meetings, challenged officials, and treated the project as unwanted. Dzieza said he did not expect the story to feel similar to Foxconn at first, because data center buildout is real, but the actors were familiar: local officials, planning meetings, and angry residents. The Foxconn project in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, was announced by President Trump as a massive LCD factory with 13,000 jobs, yet none of that happened; the land is now being used for a Microsoft data center. In that case, many people wanted to believe in manufacturing jobs. With Stratos, the hope was replaced by anger and fear about AI.

The opposition crossed usual political lines. Some objected on environmental grounds, some on tax breaks, and some on surveillance fears tied to AI. O'Leary escalated by talking up how huge the development would be and publicly defended the project by saying states compete with tax breaks and Utah gave him those tax breaks. Dzieza said an activist described data centers as a broadly unifying political issue because there was something for everybody to hate. Utah is not, unlike Wisconsin, a de-industrialized area; much of the affected community is agricultural, and residents were skeptical of job numbers. The episode also included a defamation lawsuit after O'Leary referred to all of his critics as Chinese spies on Fox News, and Fox News had to apologize on the air.

Where the Project Stands

Dzieza's reporting suggests Wonder Valley upended Utah politics and stopped Stratos in its tracks. The case shows a larger pattern in the AI industry's infrastructure boom and bipartisan backlash to that buildout: proposals can move quickly at the developer and state level, then run into local democracy. Unlike Foxconn, the danger here was not only a failed promise of jobs. It was a visible, large-scale AI power demand that residents found through meetings, rumors, and social media before the county had been asked to give consent. The next test will be whether future data center projects survive when land-use authority, public notice, and county consent are taken more seriously.