Inside our months-long investigation into Kevin O’Leary’s Utah data center debacle
Today I’m talking with Josh Dzieza, a longtime features writer here at The Verge, about Kevin O’Leary’s plans to build a massive data center in Utah. The idea was to build the world’s biggest data center — a 40,000-acre AI campus with nine gigawatts of power, or more than double the average power usage of the entire state of Utah. The project is technically called Stratos, but it’s more prominently known as Wonder Valley, a reference to O’Leary’s nickname on Shark
Get smart on it
A developer planned to build a massive data center in Utah through a state military development agency, bypassing typical local approval processes. The project was announced publicly before the county government even knew about it, sparking significant local opposition and political backlash. The approach mirrored large development projects in other states where companies shop around to different governments for the best tax breaks and permitting advantages. The local resistance ultimately stopped the project, illustrating how communities can block large infrastructure plans despite a company's political and financial resources.
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