Kevin O’Leary has agreed to scale back his proposed Utah data center project after pressure from a top state lawmaker.
On Thursday, O’Leary pledged to cut the proposed 40,000-acre Stratos development in Box Elder County nearly in half. Most of the remaining project area would be left as open space, O’Leary wrote in a letter to Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams.
“We will agree to remove 19,430 acres in and around the Locomotive Springs area in recognition of the Locomotive Springs Waterfowl Management Area immediately to the south,” the letter says.
It’s a major concession in the fight over one of the country’s most closely watched AI infrastructure projects. The proposed data center — dubbed the Stratos Project — has sparked a wave of backlash from community members who are concerned about rising energy prices, water use, and environmental damage.
The initial project was expected to require 7.5 to 9 gigawatts, making it one of the largest data center projects in the US.
Paul Palandjian, the CEO of O’Leary Digital, told Business Insider that the company had “effectively agreed to everything we were asked to do” on the project area and land use.
He also said the company’s job estimates for the power-generation and data-center portion of the project remain unchanged despite the revised footprint.
He said the company is expecting an average of 4,500 construction jobs over the life of the project and 2,500 permanent operations jobs. It still needs to study additional jobs tied to advanced manufacturing and other uses.
In a press release responding to the project’s reduced scale, Adams wrote that O’Leary had agreed to all of the conditions outlined in a demand letter he sent to the famed “Shark Tank” investor on Monday, including scaling back the project area and dedicating new water to the Great Salt Lake.
“O’Leary’s concessions in response to the demand letter I sent are a positive step forward,” Adams wrote.
The proposal still faces a lengthy review process. Adams said “no approvals or permits have been applied for, let alone issued,” and that written commitments, permitting, and environmental review would be required before the project could move forward.
A representative for the Utah Senate didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
