"Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary is defending his plans for a Utah data center that was just approved by state officials despite community backlash.
O'Leary is dismissing critics of the multibillion-dollar project as "professional protesters" and suggesting some of the opposition is being amplified by artificial intelligence.
In a post on X and an accompanying video, O'Leary, also known as Mr. Wonderful, said concerns about the project — including its impact on air, water use, heat, and noise — are well understood by his team.
"I'm actually the only developer of data centers on earth that graduated from environmental studies, so I'm pretty aware of what these concerns are," he said in the clip, posted Tuesday.
The Box Elder County data center is facing pushback from those worried about environmental strain and resource use, a common flash point as energy-hungry data centers fueling the growth of AI expand across the US.
Paul Morris, executive director of Utah's Military Installation Development Authority, which is overseeing the project, said at an April 24 board meeting that the data center is expected, once completed, to generate and consume more than twice the amount of energy currently used across the state of Utah.
According to the project's publicly available fact sheet, the full build-out will consume about 9 gigawatts of energy.
The 40,000-acre project, which local news outlet KSL reported will be built over the next 10 years, was unanimously approved by the MIDA board on Monday, which was attended by hundreds of booing and sign-waving protesters, local media reported.
O'Leary, whose firm O'Leary Digital is behind the project, in partnership with the local developer WestGen, said in his post on X that sustainability is "at the heart of what we do," pointing to technologies such as air-cooled systems and a mix of energy sources used in his other projects across the US and Canada.
"We can also put a percentage of the power generation to solar, wind, and batteries, because the battery technology is 10x more efficient than it was just five years ago," he said in his post, adding that improved battery efficiency helps lower energy costs.
The "Stratos" project in Utah will be powered by natural gas from the nearby Ruby Pipeline, according to the data center's publicly available fact sheet.
O'Leary also took aim at those who have opposed the project, claiming that "over 90% of the protesters are actually not people that live in Utah or Box Elder County," and alleging that some demonstrators are "paid by somebody — I don't know who."
He went a step further, suggesting the online backlash isn't entirely organic.
"If you look at the social media around the Utah proposal, much of it is AI-generated," he said, calling that "hypocritical."
