Inside our months-long investigation into Kevin O'Leary's Utah data center debacle
Summary
The Verge features writer Josh Dzieza spent months investigating Kevin O'Leary's plan to build Wonder Valley (technically Stratos), a 40,000-acre, nine-gigawatt AI data center campus in Utah — more than double the state's average power usage. The project was planned and approved with local residents kept in the dark, sparking a political firestorm that stopped it in its tracks. The story is a broader look at the AI infrastructure boom, bipartisan backlash to the buildout, and the one obstacle the tech industry can't spend its way out of: local democracy.
Bubble analysis
The project's cancellation shows the AI data center buildout is not unstoppable: local political resistance, opaque approvals and community opposition can actually halt projects, a cooling signal against the 'AI infrastructure expands forever' narrative. But the piece carries no investment or revenue figures, so it is a qualitative case study rather than hard evidence on the bubble question.
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