The Verge investigates Kevin O’Leary’s stalled Utah data center project

The Verge’s Josh Dzieza spent months investigating plans for a major data center in Utah associated with investor Kevin O’Leary. In a conversation with editor Nilay Patel, Dzieza describes how the project’s planning and approval process unfolded and why it became a flashpoint in state politics.

The project is technically called Stratos and was more prominently promoted as Wonder Valley, a 40,000-acre AI campus with nine gigawatts of power. The source says that capacity would be more than double Utah’s average power use. O’Leary began discussing the project publicly in late April, when most people in the county and state had not heard of it.

According to Dzieza, the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA), a state development agency, played a role in the project. The agency can take on local land-use authority within areas it establishes. The reporting describes residents being kept in the dark as plans took shape, contributing to a political backlash that stopped Stratos in its tracks.

The discussion also recounts that O’Leary called his critics Chinese spies on Fox News, after which Fox News apologized on air. The source says a defamation lawsuit followed. Dzieza frames the project as part of a broader debate over AI infrastructure expansion, local democracy and bipartisan opposition to data center development.