{"id":4741,"date":"2026-08-16T21:05:58","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T21:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usmovingexpertss.com\/?p=4741"},"modified":"2026-08-16T21:05:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T21:05:58","slug":"kevin-olearys-colossal-utah-data-center-hits-a-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usmovingexpertss.com\/?p=4741","title":{"rendered":"Kevin O’Leary’s colossal Utah data center hits a wall"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Three Utah politicians lost their seats this summer because of a data center proposal that became the state’s most volatile political issue.<\/p>\n

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Kevin O’Leary’s Stratos Project was pitched as the world’s largest AI data center campus, covering 40,000 acres near Utah’s Great Salt Lake. <\/p>\n

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Instead of breaking ground, the Shark Tank star is contending with voter fury, a defamation lawsuit, and unresolved questions about environmental harm.<\/p>\n

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O’Leary told MS NOW in an August interview that his team failed to communicate basic project details, saying his company “really screwed this up.”<\/p>\n

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That admission followed months of fierce resistance, including environmental warnings from university scientists, packed commission hearings, and primary defeats for the project’s backers.<\/p>\n

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Utah voters ousted every Stratos backer on the ballot<\/h2>\n

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Utah Senate President Stuart Adams lost his Republican primary on June 23, 2026, to challenger Stephanie Hollist after championing the fast-tracked data center approvals.<\/p>\n

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Adams had served in the Legislature for more than 20 years as one of the state’s most powerful elected officials, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.<\/p>\n

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His defeat marked the first time a sitting Utah Senate president lost a primary election in the state’s modern political history.<\/p>\n

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Two Box Elder County commissioners who voted to advance the Stratos Project, Lee Perry and Boyd Bingham, also lost their Republican primaries that election night, KSL reported. <\/p>\n

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Adams’ race would almost certainly have been uncompetitive without the data center controversy, Damon Cann, a political science professor at Utah State University, told KUER.<\/p>\n

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What the Stratos campus would demand from Utah’s desert basin<\/h2>\n

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The facility was designed to consume up to nine gigawatts at full capacity, more than doubling Utah’s peak energy demand, the Deseret News reported. <\/p>\n

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O’Leary’s team planned to power the campus with its private natural gas plant, drawing fuel from the Ruby Pipeline crossing northern Utah.<\/p>\n

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