Kevin O’Leary’s Stratos AI campus cleared a major hurdle on May 4 — but not without controversy.
Box Elder County commissioners unanimously approved the 9-gigawatt Stratos project, developed by Kevin O’Leary Digital (the infrastructure arm of O’Leary Ventures), despite loud protests from hundreds of local residents who accused officials of rushing the decision. The campus, authorized through Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA), sits on more than 40,000 acres and is designed to reach 9 GW of generation capacity at full buildout, with an initial phase targeting roughly 3 GW.
O’Leary has framed Stratos as a strategic move to keep AI compute on U.S. soil. “China built 400 gigawatts of new power over the last 24 months, and much of it is powering AI data centers,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune, adding that Stratos will supply compute for American AI firms and national defense. The site will be connected directly to the Ruby Pipeline — a 680-mile natural gas line across northern Utah — and O’Leary says it will operate off the state grid using that on-site connection.
To attract the project, Utah’s MIDA cut Stratos’s energy use tax from 6% to 0.5% and agreed to rebate 80% of property tax revenue. Those incentives, plus the scale of the buildout, make the development noteworthy for crypto industry stakeholders: large, flexible power and tax-favored industrial campuses can draw not only AI tenants but also miners and other compute-heavy operations seeking reliable, concentrated energy and favorable economics.
The approval did not end pushback. Environmentalists and local residents raised alarms about water demand near the already stressed Great Salt Lake and warned of possible local climate impacts. O’Leary responded that the facility will use closed-loop water recycling and air-liquid cooling to limit consumption. No hyperscale tenant has been announced publicly. Initial deliveries are expected in Q4 2026, with full buildout planned to unfold over about a decade in multiple phases.
Why crypto watchers should care: Stratos signals continued private investment in concentrated compute capacity tied to dedicated power infrastructure — the same dynamics that have driven some mining operations’ site choices. The project also highlights how aggressive local incentives and regulatory approvals can accelerate large-scale compute builds, while raising familiar environmental and community-friction issues the crypto industry has faced before. Expect scrutiny from regulators, environmental groups, and project opponents as Stratos moves from approval to construction.
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