O'Leary Digital Builds 9 GW Utah AI Data Center Campus

Utah's Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) approved a development agreement on April 24, 2026 for Stratos, a hyperscale data center campus in Box Elder County developed by O'Leary Digital, the infrastructure venture chaired by Kevin O'Leary (Tom's Hardware, Utah News Dispatch). Box Elder County commissioners approved companion resolutions on May 4 despite organized opposition; Utah News Dispatch reported hundreds of residents protested at the vote. As originally approved, the project spanned about 40,000 acres of private land plus 1,200 acres of military and state-owned property, with Phase 1 targeting roughly 3 GW of generation capacity and a full buildout reaching 9 GW, more than double Utah's current average statewide electricity use of about 4 GW (Tom's Hardware). MIDA executive director Paul Morris said the campus would generate its own power via a connection to the Ruby Pipeline, a 680-mile interstate natural gas line, and would "not take one electron" from the existing grid. Facing a demand letter from Utah Senate President Stuart Adams for a much smaller footprint, O'Leary Digital CEO Paul Palandjian agreed on June 4 to drop two of the three project areas, cutting the total from about 40,000 to about 20,000 acres and leaving only the Hansel Valley parcel; O'Leary also committed to dedicating excess project water to the Great Salt Lake and to commissioning an independent thermal-load study (KSL).

1. April 24, 2026

   MIDA approves a development agreement, four resolutions and a tax ordinance for the Stratos project.

2. May 4, 2026

   Box Elder County commissioners approve companion resolutions despite public protest.

3. June 1, 2026

   Utah Senate President Stuart Adams publicly demands the project area be cut from 40,000 to 10,000 acres.

4. June 4, 2026

   O'Leary Digital agrees to cut the project area to about 20,000 acres and commits water to the Great Salt Lake.

Opponents have separately sued over a decision they say stalled a referendum drive that had sought to put the county approvals to a public vote, and critics cited in local coverage argue the buildout could meaningfully raise regional carbon emissions and strain water supplies already stressed by the shrinking Great Salt Lake. Utah News Dispatch reports MIDA, a state authority whose board is mostly gubernatorially appointed rather than elected, is also weighing a design review process before construction can begin, so the project remains short of a final, buildable master plan.

These are industry-pattern observations, not claims about O'Leary Digital's private plans. Off-grid, gas-fired power paired with a hyperscale AI campus sidesteps grid-interconnection queues, currently one of the biggest bottlenecks for new AI compute, but shifts the constraint to fuel-supply contracts, emissions permitting and local political approval, as this project shows. Anyone modeling data center capacity timelines around similarly sited off-grid campuses should treat community and legislative pushback, not just construction schedules, as a first-order risk to buildout dates.

Key signals include MIDA's design review committee decisions, any environmental or thermal-load studies O'Leary Digital commits to, the outcome of the opponents' lawsuit over the blocked referendum, and whether Phase 1 construction (roughly 3 GW) begins on the reduced Hansel Valley footprint. Those will show whether the scaled-back Stratos still reaches its stated 9 GW ceiling or settles at a smaller permanent size.