// THE VERGE — MONDO
The People of Utah vs. Kevin O’Leary
In the remote Utah desert, the world’s largest data center project is being fast-tracked in secret to avoid the scrutiny of the people who live there.
Kevin O’Leary, famously known as “Mr. Wonderful” from Shark Tank, was brought in to hype the 40,000-acre development, which he named “Wonder Valley” after himself.
But O’Leary’s attention-seeking has only popularized and energized the backlash among Utahns who want nothing to do with data centers — and they’re fighting back.
Mr. Wonderful wanted to build the world’s largest data center. The neighbors had other ideas.
OnOn the morning of May 11th, the celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary appeared on Fox Business and announced that he was under attack by Chinese agents.
For weeks, he had been going on TV and posting online to tout his project, called Wonder Valley, after his nickname from the reality show Shark Tank, Mr. Wonderful. It was going to be enormous, “the largest data center in the world,” sitting on 40,000 acres north of Great Salt Lake in rural Box Elder County, Utah. A dedicated gas power plant would tap into an interstate pipeline and generate 9 gigawatts of electricity, more than double the average consumption of the entire state. The project was coming so fast, thanks to Utah’s governor and legislative leaders, O’Leary said, that “it shows China and the rest of the world we aren’t messing around.”
Stratos was proposed at enormous scale. The project area spanned roughly 40,000 acres, with the data center and power complex concentrated on its eastern side. At full buildout, the developers envisioned up to 9 gigawatts of on-site gas generation — more than twice Utah’s average electrical load.
It was also speculative. The developers were assembling land, power, and permits before securing an anchor tenant, following a common “powered land” model. The local developer’s publicly documented background is in residential and commercial assemblage rather than data center development, and he advertises a $25,000 online land-development course.
The local county officials whose approval was essential were brought in late. Kevin O’Leary’s team met Gov. Spencer Cox in January, and the Military Installation Development Authority, or MIDA — a state agency created to develop military land — seems to have become involved that same month. But Box Elder County’s commissioners were not formally briefed until March 25th.
The commissioners’ vote carried unusual consequences. Once the county gave its statutorily irrevocable consent, MIDA, not the county, became the land use authority inside the project area. Yet commissioners were given only 40 days from their formal briefing to the May 4th vote. MIDA drafted its proposed resolution and public relations language and approved the project itself while the county was still deliberating.