Utah's Military Installation Development Authority on Friday approved a development agreement for Stratos, a hyperscale data center campus in Box Elder County that could eventually consume 9 GW of power, MIDA said. Paul Morris, MIDA's executive director, told commissioners the facility "will not take one electron from the existing grid."
The campus, being developed by O'Leary Digital — the infrastructure arm of Kevin O'Leary — would span roughly 40,000 acres of private land plus 1,200 acres of military and state-owned property. Phase 1 of Stratos calls for about 3 GW of on-site generation capacity; MIDA projects the finished campus could reach the full 9 GW over time.
MIDA cut the project's energy use tax from 6% to 0.5% and agreed to rebate 80% of the property tax revenue generated by the development back to O'Leary Digital. Morris projected $30 million a year for Box Elder County during the initial phase and more than $100 million annually once the campus reaches full capacity. The authority also estimated state sales tax receipts tied to the data centers could reach $250 million per year and said the development would create 2,000 permanent jobs in the county after construction.
The project is designed to operate off-grid, with all power produced on-site through a connection to the Ruby Pipeline, a 680-mile interstate natural gas line that crosses northern Utah on its route from Wyoming to Oregon. Morris said the campus could eventually feed surplus power back into the grid, even as he insisted it would not draw from the existing electricity system.
O'Leary Digital has not publicly named a hyperscaler tenant for Stratos at the time of writing. The developer is already pursuing a companion campus, the Wonder Valley project in Alberta, Canada, announced in 2024, underscoring a regional push by the company into large-scale, gas-powered compute campuses.
The scale of the plan underlines why MIDA and county officials framed the deal as transformational. A 9 GW complex would be more than double Utah's current average electricity use of roughly 4 GW, making Stratos one of the largest concentrated power users planned in the state. That gap between what exists today and what the campus could demand is a central fact for local officials weighing the agreement.
There is an internal friction built into MIDA's presentation: the authority argues Stratos will not burden the grid while also acknowledging the facility could return surplus generation to it. At the same time, county leaders delayed their final vote on the project — the Box Elder County Commission postponed its decision from Friday until the next day — leaving the agreement approved by MIDA one procedural step short of local sign-off.
Kevin O'Leary framed the project within a global competition for data center capacity, saying, "China built 400 gigawatts of new power over the last 24 months, and much of it is powering AI data centers," and adding, "We're in a race with them." His office says Stratos is aimed at capturing demand from large-scale compute customers, though no purchaser has been disclosed.
The development agreement carries immediate financial incentives for the developer and promises long-term revenue for county and state treasuries, but it leaves key details unresolved: who will lease the racks, how on-site gas-fired generation will be regulated and financed, and how surplus power flows would be handled if the campus begins exporting electricity. Those unanswered specifics help explain the county commission's decision to pause and examine the deal more closely.
Tomorrow's county vote will determine whether Box Elder moves to join MIDA in backing what would be a roughly 40,000-acre, largely off-grid compute campus that proponents say will deliver millions in annual revenue and 2,000 permanent jobs. With no hyperscaler tenant named and broad tax breaks already on the table, the commission's decision will decide whether those projections are actionable or remain promises on paper.
