Utah just approved something absurd. Kevin O'Leary's O'Leary Digital got the green light from the state's Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) to build "Stratos," a 9-gigawatt hyperscale data center campus in Box Elder County. That's more than double the entire state's average electricity consumption as confirmed in official filings. Phase 1 alone targets 3 GW of capacity. No tenants have been announced, though Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Apple are all mentioned as potential operators.
The deal comes with generous incentives. O'Leary's energy use tax drops from 6% to 0.5%, plus 80% property tax rebates. MIDA executive director Paul Morris claims the facility "will not take one electron" from the existing grid since it runs off-grid, powered by natural gas from the Ruby Pipeline. Critics point out that burning through that much natural gas could still drive up prices for everyone else.
O'Leary Digital hasn't built a data center before. Large-scale data center construction has bankrupt experienced contractors. Truland Group, previously the 10th-largest electrical contractor in the U.S., went under after working on Utah's NSA data center due to cost overruns and engineering issues. Building 9 GW of capacity requires partners with expertise in both utility-scale power generation and mission-critical facilities, narrowing the field to firms like Bechtel, Kiewit, or Fluor on the power side, and DPR Construction or Turner Construction on the data center side.
The construction industry's already squeezed. High-voltage electrical equipment is scarce. Skilled labor is hard to find. Recent reporting shows half of planned U.S. data center builds have been delayed or canceled due to power infrastructure shortages and parts constraints. O'Leary's betting he can assemble the right consortium to pull off something that would challenge established developers. The track record suggests this project is more likely to shrink than hit its 9 GW target.