Stratos/Wonder Valley – A Utah data center proposed by Kevin O’Leary’s O’Leary Digital—known as Stratos and Wonder Valley—would span 40,000 acres and could require up to 9 GW of power. An energy analyst says the project lacks the prerequisites for a build of that scale, putting the c
For now, the idea exists more on paper than on construction sites.
Kevin O’Leary’s proposed Utah data center—referred to as Stratos and also as Wonder Valley—would cover 40,000 acres, roughly double the size of Manhattan. Its power demand is projected at up to 9 GW, more than double Utah’s entire state average electricity use.
To Olivia Wang, a research analyst at Sightline Climate, that size may be precisely what makes it hard to believe. She says the project doesn’t have the “building blocks in place” that would suggest anything close to the scale being discussed.
“There is no precedent for a developer pulling off an off-grid project of this size yet,” Wang wrote via email. “And the project has none of the building blocks in place that would make us think otherwise.”
Her team at Sightline Climate has built a pipeline database that tracks more than 1,000 hyperscale data center projects worldwide, scoring them on factors meant to predict whether they actually get built.
On those measures, Wang says Wonder Valley lands at a likelihood of “roughly 15%.”
She points to how the project performs across the checklist: development progress, whether power has been sourced and financing secured, and whether tenants have signed on. “Wonder Valley comes up short on every single one at the moment,” Wang said.
The timeline is also hard to reconcile with what’s happening on the ground. The Logic reported that construction would start this year, with a first operating phase by 2027. But there is no construction activity yet. The Stratos Project website lists Phase 1 construction from 2026 to 2028. The larger buildout—9 GW of capacity and about 90 data center buildings—is shown under a “2030+” timeline.
Even the claims about demand remain thin. O’Leary told the Desert News that “we’ve got tenants knocking on our door,” but there is no public information indicating any tenants have been signed.
Wang adds that, to her knowledge, no power contracts have been signed and financing hasn’t been secured.
In February 2026, O’Leary’s company, O’Leary Digital, formed a joint venture with developer West GenCo on the project. But Wang says that developer doesn’t appear to have a prior track record of delivering data center infrastructure. Fast Company could not find a website or LinkedIn page for West GenCo. or even mentions of it separate from O’Leary.
O’Leary Digital did not respond to a request for comments about these factors or the timeline.
The mismatch between ambition and readiness is showing up in other parts of the industry, too. A Sightline Climate report from February, authored by Wang, estimated that 30% to 50% of the 2026 pipeline is “unlikely to come online before the end of the year.”
The report also warned that “Projected delivery dates are getting harder to trust.” It cited that in 2025, 26% of expected capacity slipped, and another 10% of projects pushed back their commercial operation dates without much notice.
Power is one of the biggest bottlenecks, and Wonder Valley’s approach makes it even more sensitive to delays. The project plans to run entirely off-grid, but Wang notes that no air permit has been filed with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality.
“Developers need to monitor air quality for a full year before they can even submit an application,” she wrote. She also pointed to remarks by the department commissioner to the Standard-Examiner that it could take two years for the Stratos development to get those approvals.
For Wang, the gap between that permitting timeline and the project’s promises is hard to square. She added that “that makes O’Leary’s claim that the first gigawatt could be online within two years difficult to square with basic math.”
Then there’s the local political pressure that has derailed data center plans across the country.
Between March and June of 2025, 20 data center projects—representing about $98 billion in investments—were blocked or delayed, according to Data Center Watch. The article described multiple cases in which local opposition played some role.
That resistance isn’t fading. A Gallup poll from May 13 found that seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing AI data centers in their areas, and 48% of Americans are “strongly opposed.”
Wonder Valley has faced especially pointed pushback. Residents have demonstrated against the project in person. Its water rights application was pulled after Utahns filed nearly 4,000 protests against it. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that several protesters cited concerns about Utah’s drought and the declining Great Salt Lake.
Wang says opposition “of this scale” has been driving cancellations nationwide. She said her team has tracked over 40 new moratorium proposals across the U.S. in just the past two months.
Wang isn’t the only one casting doubt. Tech writer Ed Zitron has argued that no one has built a 1GW data center, and he doubts that O’Leary could build a 9GW one. He also wrote that the effort could amount to “another scandal and lose a bunch of people’s money.”
Zitron has also said it’s difficult to even get a sense of how much data center capacity hyperscalers are actually building. For him, that lack of clarity is part of evidence supporting the idea that the AI data center boom may be a bubble.
With no construction underway yet. uncertain commitments on tenants and power contracts. and permitting steps that could take years. the project’s credibility is under strain precisely where it matters most: the gap between announced scale and the ordinary. unglamorous steps required to build at all.
Kevin O’Leary O’Leary Digital Stratos Wonder Valley Utah data center 9 GW off-grid energy analyst Sightline Climate Olivia Wang data center opposition Utah Department of Environmental Quality moratorium proposals Gallup poll