Artificial intelligence: Why Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary wants to build a massive data center in Utah.
https://slate.com/technology/2026/06/artificial-intelligence-kevin-oleary-utah-data-center.html
Publish Date: 2026-06-01 05:40:00
Source Domain: slate.com
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.
Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary wants to bring the world’s largest A.I. campus to Utah. Over the past month, the Canadian American businessman has been planning out this megaproject alongside financiers, private landowners, military strategists, and state officials, on 40,000 acres of unincorporated land in Box Elder County, right next to the ever-dwindling Great Salt Lake. The idea is to collaborate with the military to install a 30-building “hyperscale” cluster as a matter of national security—i.e., to use a swath of undeveloped Western land to produce high-level American A.I. because, according to O’Leary, “the country with the best AI is gonna win the wars,” and he does not want China to get there first. When constructed, the facility will be more than twice the size of Manhattan and bigger even than Bryce Canyon’s 35,000 acres. For Utah, that means a space with dozens of data centers, a handful of research facilities, and, potentially, some worker housing. The builders are also adding sleek glass panels and internal office space to craft the “sexiest, coolest construction posting in America,” according to Paul Palandjian, the CEO of O’Leary Digital.
There’s a problem with these futuristic plans, however: A lot of people in Box Elder County don’t want this. Community data center resistance is not a new trend in the U.S. But it’s been potent enough for Box Elder County that, even in deep-red Utah, the people are likely to demand significant political overhaul.
“Most people feel betrayed, and that’s bipartisan,” Stephen Otterstrom, a longtime Salt Lake City resident running to represent District 21 in the Statehouse, told me. “I have not encountered a single person who’s said, ‘Wow, this is going to be a great thing for us,’ outside of public officials.”
To take it…
