Box Elder County commissioners approved Kevin O’Leary’s 9GW Stratos AI campus in Utah on May 4, amid loud public protests from hundreds of local residents.
Summary
- Kevin O’Leary’s Stratos project, a 40,000-acre AI campus in Utah, received county approval on May 4 despite strong community opposition over water, energy, and environmental concerns.
- The campus will generate up to 9 gigawatts at full buildout, more than twice Utah’s current total electricity consumption, powered by an on-site natural gas pipeline.
- O’Leary framed the project as a direct response to China building 400 gigawatts of AI-capable power over the past two years, calling it a national security priority.
Box Elder County commissioners in Utah voted unanimously on May 4 to approve the Stratos AI campus backed by Kevin O’Leary Digital, the infrastructure arm of O’Leary Ventures.
The approval came over the objections of hundreds of residents who chanted “Shame!” as the vote was announced and who said they had been given too little time to raise concerns before the decision.
The campus, designated through Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority, spans more than 40,000 acres and will reach 9 gigawatts of generation capacity at full buildout.
Phase one calls for approximately 3 gigawatts. Kevin O’Leary told Fox Business the site will be powered entirely by an on-site connection to the Ruby Pipeline, a 680-mile natural gas line crossing northern Utah, rather than drawing from the state grid.
China as the stated rationale
O’Leary made the competition framing explicit. “China built 400 gigawatts of new power over the last 24 months, and much of it is powering AI data centers,” he said, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. “We’re in a race with them.” He described the project as providing compute power for US AI companies and national defense.
Utah’s MIDA cut Stratos’s energy use tax from 6% to 0.5% and agreed to rebate 80% of property tax revenue to attract the project. Environmental critics raised concerns about water use near the already-depleted Great Salt Lake and potential weather pattern changes.
O’Leary said the facility would use closed-loop water recycling and air-liquid cooling. No hyperscale tenant has been publicly named. Initial delivery is expected in Q4 2026, with full buildout spanning approximately ten years across multiple phases.
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