Kevin O’Leary’s Two Data Centres Are So Big They (Almost) Defy Comprehension

New data centres are being announced all over North America—and beyond. Some provide power at a smaller scale, but others (sometimes referred to as “hyperscale”) provide the necessary power for large-scale cloud service providers, like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. These, in turn, provide the necessary compute for artificial intelligence platforms.

The demand for these services is growing, as is their footprint. The University of Calgary counted 239 data centres across Canada at the moment, including 105 in Ontario, thirty-five in Quebec, and twenty-two in Alberta. If we want to include planned projects not yet operational, this number goes up to 309, according to reporting by The Logic published last month. According to the Canada Energy Regulator, Canada’s data centres alone could demand up to twelve gigawatts (GW) of power by 2050—which, for context, is the amount of power used by the whole province of Alberta at peak times.

Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary has taken a special interest. In 2024, his venture capital firm O’Leary Ventures announced the creation of a new data centre in Alberta, called “Wonder Valley”—likely a play on his “Mr. Wonderful” moniker. Then, this year, O’Leary announced a second data centre project in Utah, called “Stratos” (and sometimes, confusingly, called “Wonder Valley” as well).

To make sense of the size and impact of these projects, here’s what you need to know:

How big will these projects be?

When Wonder Valley was announced in 2024, it was being touted as the world’s largest AI data centre industrial park—at an estimated 7,000 acres. But other projects have had the same idea, and Wonder Valley is no longer on track to set a world record. Still, we can expect it to be the largest data centre in Canada by a significant margin.

O’Leary cites Alberta’s “ideal cold-weather climate,” “highly skilled labour force,” “pro-business policies,” and “attractive tax regime” as reasons why it’s a suitable home for such a massive project.

Stratos, in Utah, will include 40,000 acres of private land and an additional 1,200 acres of military and state-owned land, or 41,200 acres altogether. Announced in February 2026, Stratos is projected to be twice the size of Manhattan—making it, for now, the largest data centre in the world.

Presently, the world’s largest operational data centre, located in Inner Mongolia, is 245 acres—a tiny fraction of how massive these projects are envisioned to be.

How much power will these projects generate?

Wonder Valley aims to generate 7.5 GW over the next five to ten years. The first phase of creating Wonder Valley will provide 1.4 GW of power, with one GW increases annually after that.

Stratos aims to generate up to nine GW once it is completed. The first phase of Stratos aims to generate three GW of power.

One gigawatt of power is equal to 1 billion watts. That’s a lot of power: roughly equal to the power of a million standard microwaves operating at once.

How much do these projects cost?

In 2024, Kevin O’Leary announced his commitment to provide over $70 billion to the creation of Wonder Valley. The estimated total cost of the Stratos project has not been publicly announced, but the first phase of the project alone is estimated to cost around $20 billion, according to Utah Money Watch. No government funding has, as yet, been promised for either project.

How much water do data centres use?

Water is used in data centres to keep computers from overheating—a controversial application of the resource that we also need for daily life.

The Wonder Valley data centre plans to use 24 million cubic metres of water annually, sourced from the Smoky River. This river remains one of Alberta’s least impacted waterways, as the Wonder Valley project will divert approximately 0.2 percent of its annual flow.

It’s still unclear just how much water Stratos will require, as well as where the water will come from. Box Elder County promises a “closed-loop” configuration, meaning the water will be recycled, and they’ve also promised not to draw from Great Salt Lake—which has already lost more than 70 percent of its water to agricultural and industrial uses.

But recently, Stratos applied to transfer 1,900 acre-feet of water from Salt Wells Spring to Box Elder County. In response, 3,700 people filed protests to the Utah Division of Water Rights, asking it to reject the data centre’s request for a permit. Stratos eventually withdrew their application, but they are still going to need a lot of water for the project. They have reportedly filed a new application to draw water from a different spring, but that was also withdrawn on May 22.

What’s the sell?

Wonder Valley was launched with a minute-long video on O’Leary’s YouTube channel, claiming “The Single Largest AI Compute Data Center Park on Earth.” The video has a distinctly AI-generated sheen. A narrator with a slow, soothing voice tells the viewer that Wonder Valley is a place where “technology and nature will come together in perfect harmony.” As buildings emerge from the ground, their panelled windows reflecting the rays of an AI sunset, romantic strings play in the background. A bird flies overhead.

The Box Elder County website boasts of the creation of 2,000 permanent jobs and good, old-fashioned appeals to “long-term national defense, energy resilience, and economic development goals.”

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What are the environmental risks?

Alberta’s cold climate is better suited to a hyperscale data centre than Utah’s desert ecosystem, but the project still carries environmental risks. The University of Calgary estimates that the Wonder Valley project could produce up to 33 million tons of emissions per year. This would completely undo Alberta’s progress in reducing its emissions over the last twenty years; between 2005 and 2023, the province reduced its emissions by roughly 29 million tons. Researchers warn that “a handful of data-centre projects could raise emissions levels to those of twenty years ago—when we burned coal to power the grid.”

The Alberta government has opted not to conduct an environmental impact assessment for the project. The federal government has not yet determined whether to conduct their own assessment.

As for Stratos, according to an analysis by Utah Clean Energy, based on publicly available information, the minimum amount of carbon dioxide that the data centre would produce annually is 30 million tons—which would increase Utah’s carbon dioxide emissions by 55 percent. Depending on the gas generation technologies that the project uses, this number could wind up being as high as 41 million tons.

The thermal load of the Stratos project, estimated by academic Robert Davies, is sixteen GW. This number includes the nine GW of power that Stratos aims to generate, plus an additional seven GW of waste heat. The entire sixteen GW of heat must be dumped back into the local environment, which is already a dry desert climate. According to Davies, this will elevate temperatures in the area around the clock, significantly impacting the local ecosystem. Davies writes, “It is the equivalent of about twenty-three atom bombs worth of energy dumped into this local environment every single day.”

How will locals be impacted?

In January 2025, Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation issued an open letter to the provincial government, expressing concerns and stating that they had not been consulted by the premier about the Wonder Valley plan before it was announced to the public. “We rely on the water from the Smoky River,” the letter states, “and it is one of the few areas accessible to exercise our way of life, which has been systematically eroded.”

Then, in March 2026, O’Leary signed a deal with the Municipal District of Greenview, to purchase thousands of hectares of former Crown land. Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation was not consulted on the land sale, nor was the nation consulted on a recent water permit application from Wonder Valley, which the provincial government approved. Sheldon Sunshine, chief of the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation, told the National Observer that the lack of consultation was an “absolute failure” of the process. Meanwhile, the Alberta government stated that their decision not to consult the nation was “in accordance with the Alberta government’s consultation policies and guidelines.”

Residents of Box Elder County have not been shy about expressing their outrage towards the Stratos project. Earlier this month, roughly 6,000 people signed a letter to Utah governor Spencer Cox, asking him to protect the community and the Great Salt Lake. Rallies have also unfolded in Box Elder County and Salt Lake City.

O’Leary has bristled at any accusation of public displeasure, and he has argued that Stratos will benefit the community by creating jobs in construction and engineering. Discussing a recent protest in Box Elder County, he claimed, without evidence, that protesters were “professional,” “being bussed in” from out of state, and “paid by somebody—I don’t know who.”

What are the timelines?

When Wonder Valley was announced back in 2024, construction was slated to begin in 2026, with the first phase operational by 2027. Now, developers expect that construction on the project might start around late 2028. In Utah, timelines have not yet been publicly stated.

In 2025, O’Leary himself speculated that half of all planned data centres in North America won’t end up being built.