Utah County Delays Vote on Kevin O’Leary’s 9GW Data Center Project Amid Scope Concerns
April 28, 2026
Utah County Delays Vote on Kevin O’Leary’s 9GW Data Center Project Amid Scope Concerns
A planned vote on a massive hyperscale data center campus backed by "Shark Tank" investor Kevin O’Leary has been postponed in Box Elder County, Utah, as local officials say they were caught off guard by the project’s enormous scale and the extent of state involvement. The delay highlights growing tensions between state-level economic development initiatives and local governance over large infrastructure projects.
The Box Elder County Planning Commission postponed the meeting after commissioners expressed frustration that Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) and state officials had not fully disclosed the project’s size or the degree of county and state obligations. "The thing that’s so frustrating for us, for commissioners, is all of a sudden, we’re brought this in the last hour, and we’re expected to hurry," commission chair Tyler Vincent said during the meeting. Local officials indicated they need more time to assess the true impacts of the development. The next vote has been rescheduled for May 4 and will be moved to the Box Elder County Fairgrounds Fine Arts Building to accommodate a larger public turnout.
The project, dubbed Stratos, is being developed by O’Leary Digital, the infrastructure arm of Kevin O’Leary, and has already secured approval from MIDA, which the state has authorized to oversee large-scale developments. However, final approval from Box Elder County remains necessary before construction can proceed. If built, the data center campus could have a capacity of up to 9GW of power—more than double Utah’s current statewide electricity consumption of 4GW. The facility would sit on 40,000 acres of private land plus 1,200 acres of military and state-owned property, with phase one targeting 3GW of generation capacity.
The power for the campus would come from on-site natural gas generation connected directly to the 680-mile Ruby interstate natural gas pipeline. MIDA executive director Paul Morris assured county commissioners that the facility "will not take one electron" from the grid and could even supply surplus energy back in the future. Despite these assurances, the project has sparked significant local opposition over potential environmental impacts and the generous tax incentives offered by MIDA. To attract hyperscale customers, MIDA has promised to cut the energy use tax from 6% to 0.5% and rebate 80% of the property tax revenue generated by the development back to O’Leary Digital.
O’Leary has framed the project as a matter of national security, telling the board, according to the Salt Lake Tribune: "China built 400GW of new power over the last 24 months, and much of it is powering AI data centers. We're in a race with them." The delay underscores a broader industry challenge: balancing the rapid expansion of AI-driven data center infrastructure with local regulatory oversight and community concerns over energy consumption, environmental impact, and fiscal policy.
Source: datacenterdynamics
