{"id":965,"date":"2026-06-03T18:09:01","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T18:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=965"},"modified":"2026-06-03T18:09:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T18:09:01","slug":"kevin-oleary-says-hes-not-walking-away-from-his-utah-ai-data-center-despite-call-to-shrink-it-by-75","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=965","title":{"rendered":"Kevin O’Leary says he’s ‘not walking away’ from his Utah AI data center, despite call to shrink it by 75%"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kevin O’Leary’s company says it was caught off guard by a Utah lawmaker’s demand to dramatically shrink its proposed AI data center campus.<\/p>\n

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On Monday, Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams said he sent a letter to the celebrity investor calling for a 75% reduction in the proposed data center campus.<\/p>\n

Adams \u2014 who also chairs the Military Installation Development Authority, which gave the project an initial approval in April \u2014 wrote that he wants the Box Elder County data center to be reduced from 40,000 acres to about 10,000 acres. He also said he wanted stronger commitments on water, conservation, environmental review, heat reduction, and public transparency before the project moves forward.<\/p>\n

“We have not engaged any Utah legislators on this. The letter caught us off guard,” a spokesperson for O’Leary Digital told Business Insider. “What I can tell you is that we are analyzing the letter carefully with our team, and Kevin intends to respond to President Adams personally before the end of the week.”<\/p>\n

The Stratos Project is a proposed AI and defense data center campus in Box Elder County, Utah’s extreme northwestern region.<\/p>\n

State documents describe it as a large-scale data and energy campus meant to support artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and defense operations. If built at its current proposed scale, the campus would require 7.5 to 9 gigawatts, making it one of the largest data center projects in the US.<\/p>\n

O’Leary told The Salt Lake Tribune that he was “not walking away” from the project and called the proposed reduction “outrageous.”<\/p>\n

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“This is not the deal I had with Adams. That’s not what we agreed to,” he said. “Cutting back the deal 75% is like me selling you a house, and you get to live in the upstairs toilet.”<\/p>\n

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