Inside our months-long investigation into Kevin O’Leary’s Utah data center debacle

The Verge has published a months-long investigation into Kevin O'Leary's plans to build a data center in Utah, discussed by features writer Josh Dzieza in a Decoder interview with editor-in-chief Nilay Patel.

The project, technically called Stratos and more prominently known as Wonder Valley, was envisioned as a 40,000-acre AI campus with nine gigawatts of power — described in the interview as more than double the average power usage of the entire state of Utah.

According to Dzieza, the project moved through the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA), a state development agency that deals with projects having some military purpose and holds power to override local land use. By the time O'Leary publicly discussed the project on Fox in late April, MIDA had approved it but the county had not, and the county did not know about it until about a month beforehand. Dzieza said O'Leary began asking around at the state level with the governor in early January.

Dzieza said local residents learned of the project in late April through local coverage, two public meetings and word of mouth. Opposition formed across political lines, with a state intelligence record describing a potentially combustible mix of conservative groups and Great Salt Lake water preservation activists coming together against the data center.

Dzieza said the backlash wounded the project. Two local commissioners lost their seats, and Senate president J. Stuart Adams, the MIDA chair, also lost his seat. Local activists filed a referendum seeking to repeal the county's consent; it was rejected by the county and is now being litigated. Dzieza said everyone has hit pause until that case is resolved, and that the project does not have the momentum it had initially.

Dzieza also said O'Leary referred to his critics as Chinese spies on Fox News and had to apologize, and that Fox News apologized on the air.