Kevin O'Leary has agreed to cut the footprint of his proposed Project Stratos data center in Box Elder County, Utah, nearly in half. In a letter to Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams on Thursday, O'Leary pledged to remove 19,430 acres from the original 40,000-acre development, specifically the area in and around the Locomotive Springs Waterfowl Management Area. The concession came after Adams called on O'Leary to slash the project by 75 percent, which would have reduced it to roughly 10,000 acres. The project has drawn local concerns over water consumption, energy use, and the rural footprint of a massive data center in a semi-arid region. O'Leary's cut is roughly half — short of the 75 percent Adams requested but still a significant retreat.
Kevin O'Leary is shrinking his planned 40,000-acre data center in Utah by almost half after the state's senate president told him to cut it by 75%. In a letter sent Thursday to Senate President J. Stuart Adams, O'Leary said he'd drop 19,430 acres — the chunk near the Locomotive Springs Waterfowl Management Area — from his Project Stratos development in Box Elder County. He didn't give Adams the full 75% cut he asked for, but it's still a major pullback for a project that's been catching heat over water use, energy demands, and what a facility that size would do to a rural area in northern Utah.
Fills a mild coverage gap in money (8 stories, 6%) with a specific, checkable story about a celebrity-backed data center scaling back after political pressure, backed by two strong primary sources (Business Insider letter details, The Verge corroboration) with exact acreage figures and named officials.
The concession signals that even celebrity-backed megaprojects face real political resistance when they collide with local resource concerns. Data centers are proliferating across the American West, and fights over water and energy in semi-arid regions are intensifying. O'Leary's half-measure — splitting the difference between the original plan and Adams's demand — sets a messy but real precedent: lawmakers can extract meaningful concessions from infrastructure investors if the pressure is public enough. The outcome also highlights a growing tension between the AI and cloud computing boom and the communities expected to host it.
This is what happens when the 'Shark Tank guy' meets actual local politics. Data centers are booming across the West and communities are starting to push back on the water and energy costs. O'Leary didn't give the full 75% cut the senate president wanted, but he still lost almost 20,000 acres — that's a real concession from someone who's used to negotiating on his terms. Expect more of these fights as every tech company races to build infrastructure in places that don't have the water for it.
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