“Data centers are today’s gold rush,” Kevin O’Leary stated during his keynote at Data Center World 2025.
Kevin O’Leary — better known as “Mr. Wonderful” from ABC’s “Shark Tank” — made a surprise appearance at Data Center World 2025 in Washington, D.C. What’s a venture capitalist doing at a major IT event? He’s building the world’s largest AI factories, and he’s ready to talk about it.
The project, called Wonder Valley, is a massive off-grid AI data center under construction in Alberta’s Municipal District of Greenview in Canada. Purpose-built for AI workloads, the facility will span 6,000 acres and boast a staggering 7.5 gigawatts of power capacity. The initial phase of 1.5 GW is expected to complete in the 2027-2028 timeframe at a cost of $2 billion; the remainder will be added gradually over the next few years.
“Data centers are today’s gold rush,” said O’Leary during his keynote. “AI is in high demand, and the strongest market is in companies of 5 to 500 employees.”
Bypassing lengthy regulatory and grid interconnect delays
O’Leary explained how difficult it can be to build and power a new data center.
He said the regulatory environment is difficult; there are many permitting and approval hurdles to overcome. Utilities prefer to take half a decade or more to deliver power to new customers. He gave an example of a data center asking for 250 MW now and 250 MW more in two years. The response: 25 MW was all they could get — but not for another three years.
“If you want to attract investors, you have to get a project operational within 24 months,” said O’Leary. “We had to figure out how to pull this off when there was no power available on the grid.”
Solution: Find sources of stranded power, specifically large quantities of natural gas that may not have easy access to the market. In that order, he found the best sources: Alberta, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Virginia.
“Alberta, Canada, is the motherload in North America with about 10 times the natural gas of all others,” he said.
