Kevin O'leary Pushes 9 GW Stratos Project in Box Elder County
Kevin O'Leary is pushing a 9 GW Stratos Project across 40,000 acres in Box Elder County, Utah, a scale that would more than double the 4 gigawatts currently used by the entire state. The first phase would target 3 GW and carry a rough $45 billion price tag.
That size has already drawn resistance. More than 80 residents showed up at a recent county commission meeting with signs reading “People before profits,” and officials delayed a crucial vote as electricity demand and water use became the focus.
Box Elder County and 9 GW
9 GW is the figure that puts the project in a different class. The put that level at more than 20% of all data-center capacity currently operating in the U.S., which helps explain why the proposal is being treated as a regional infrastructure decision rather than a single-site build.
40,000 acres is the footprint O'Leary is proposing for the site, and he says the project is tied to a broader contest. “I think we're in a competition with the Chinese on economic superiority and military superiority,” he said, linking the Utah plan to national economic and security aims.
Ruby pipeline and local pushback
On-site natural gas via the Ruby pipeline is central to O'Leary's plan to avoid straining the national grid. The company pitch shifts the immediate burden away from the broader power system, but it leaves local officials and residents focused on what the project would demand inside Utah itself.
Water use is the sharper fault line. Utah is facing the disappearance of the Great Salt Lake, and the Stratos Project raises concerns about how a 9 GW campus would fit into a state already worried about electricity and water consumption.
Permit pressure in 2026
2026 is shaping up as a permit year for O'Leary's AI push, not a build year. In Alberta, he is also pursuing a $70 billion, 7.5-gigawatt campus, and last month he said: “The minute we get the permit, that triggers a whole bunch of other activities in terms of how we finance it, when we start engineering, design, everything else.”
That sequence matters because permitting is now the choke point across the sector. The Economist said hardware suppliers have increased capital spending by only half, are on track to invest less than a third as much as the cloud giants this year, and the NIMBY movement blocked $156 billion in domestic data-center projects in 2025. New York, Maine, Oklahoma, and Georgia have also moved to throttle or outright ban large-scale data-center projects, so the Utah vote and the Alberta approvals are the next tests for O'Leary's plan.
