Inside our months-long investigation into Kevin O’Leary’s Utah data center debacle
A long-form investigation explores the failed 'Wonder Valley' project, a massive AI data center proposed by Kevin O’Leary in Utah. The project faced intense local opposition and political backlash, highlighting the friction between AI infrastructure expansion and local democratic processes.
Why it matters
It illustrates the growing tension between the massive energy and land requirements of the AI industry and the concerns of local communities.
Today I’m talking with Josh Dzieza, a longtime features writer here at The Verge , about Kevin O’Leary’s plans to build a massive data center in Utah . The idea was to build the world’s biggest data center — a 40,000-acre AI campus with nine gigawatts of power, or more than double the average power usage of the entire state of Utah. The project is technically called Stratos, but it’s more prominently known as Wonder Valley, a reference to O’Leary’s nickname on Shark Tank . Josh has spent months reporting on this project, and it’s fair to say Wonder Valley has completely upended Utah politics.
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