KEVIN O’LEARY’S DATA CENTER PROJECT ‘STRATOS’ CUT BY 75% AS COMMUNITY OPPOSITION MOUNTS -MEA CULPA

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Recording from another hot day here in London, I wanted to share a story with you I saw this morning out of the Business Insider because we keep covering this data center story a lot of times from the financial side, the economic side. We've also done several stories on what's happening with the buildout and the pushback from communities across the country as to these big companies coming into their communities basically telling people what they're going to do with the land that sits next to them or in some case even their own land, how they're going to be impacted in their quality of life. Of course they sell it as if they're going to be you know creating thousands of jobs and bringing prosperity to the community but a lot of people don't want that okay they don't want their quiet communities disrupted. There's Erin Brockovich has been out has now a map I think where you can see how many thousands of these projects are under construction and we know that the whole AI you know financing boom right now and frenzy is dependent the success dependent upon them getting these data centers pushed through the process built up and running and generating revenue to cover all all of these trillions of dollars of future expectations, debt issuances, bond issuances. So I want to share the story with you today it's one example of a guy Kevin O'Leary who had a big data center still has a big data center planned in Utah but there was some community pushback of course I'm not I'm not anti excuse me in the background we got some sirens or ambulance down there I'm 10 floors up too so you can understand how loud that is but you know you know it's I'm not against Kevin O'Leary he's a watch guy I love watches he's an entrepreneur obviously he's done real well in business but he came into this project and because I've been following it for a while very bravado very look at this is what we're going to do don't worry about it it's going to get approved as we want it to be well guess what he's out with a little bit of a mea culpa now today in the story I'm seeing I think it's I think it's needs to be hopefully humbling hopefully other big giant companies will take this as a warning sign that the communities the people that live there that make their lives there raise their families there have a lot to say okay I'll share the article with you before I jump in don't forget subscribe the channel please go check out my risk map and Rod and I are doing a show Wednesday you're not going to want to miss this Rod is going to give us some exclusive content here things he's going to be sharing before he really makes this stuff public so please make sure you're on board for this he's going to focus on topics not again not discussed much elsewhere right now he's going to be discussing two players in the ai bubble that haven't received enough coverage he's going to be revealing exclusive content about two giants SoftBank and Jane Street again this has to do with the debt with the ratings with the financing and what Rod's seeing so I want you guys to be present for that let me jump to today's oh by the way I'll also link Rod's a sub stack in the description below so go support Rod's work and get on board for that so this is the story out of business insider today Kevin O'Leary says Kevin O'Leary says he could have done a better job selling his plan for a hyperscale data center to the people of Utah in an interview with MS now released on Thursday the shark tank investor talked about how he and his team did not properly communicate plans for the Stratos or Stratos data center project in Fox elder county with residents and quote really screwed this up quote I have no interest in causing an environmental disaster on my legacy says that'll never get that's never going to happen there's zero probability O'Leary added that he and his team were planning to be more planning to be more transparent of of course that begs the question why weren't you from the outset sharing plans for a one gigawatt facility hold your thoughts on that it used to be a lot bigger and what the heat noise and water impact of this facility would look like critics he says can extrapolate the impact of his fully built data center from those plans Corey O'Leary the original plan for his data center was gargantuan occupying a full 40 000 acres of land this would require up to nine gigawatts of energy O'Leary said in an April interview with the wall street journal okay now we're going back you know a few months now right however the plan drew strong criticism from residents in the region environmental activists and local lawmakers Utah senate president Jay Stewart Adams posted an open letter that he sent to O'Leary back in June calling for a 75 percent reduction in the proposed data center size following the uproar O'Leary pledged to reduce the size of the development and to offer greater transparency regarding the project's construction he said in the ms now interview that he has a lot of work to do and apologized to the residents of box elder and here's his quote if i've said anything that offends you yes i apologize if i've done anything that you think has been unfair i apologize but i also with that would say i want you to lend an open ear to what i'm going to show you in the months ahead if you guys ever watch the shark tank it's kind of addicting i used to watch those shows all the time but basically um you know he he's very he's more like he's like you know mr what mr wonderful they call him on shark tank right because like he could do no wrong uh very egotistical guy right says speaks his mind very overpowering very uh very terse right uh very overwhelming so says O'Leary has stood from firm on his decision to build a data center in Utah saying in the ms now interview that although some people may view him as a bad shark he plans to become a major contributor to the local economy you know O'Leary has also been posting on social media about the data center and his plans for the area in a post on linkedin last week it says the investor uh wrote data center developers have to earn the trust of the communities where we build and that starts with complete transparency okay well the question is is this now after the fact maybe this will write the ship maybe this will build some trust with his community maybe this will impact some other uh you know hyperscalers to follow suit that's exactly what we intend to do in box elder we have work to do to earn the community support but the facts will be public from water and power to jobs and tax revenue he wrote if you want to build in a community for decades you have the responsibility to become an asset to it i don't disagree with that prospect or with that um with that statement by any means but again how much of these um hyperscalers and these large corporations come in kind of begging for forgiveness later what i want to say here my message is you guys in your local communities are having an impact i'm not you know necessarily against all data centers we have to uh embrace some kind of progress i think uh i'll let you leave you guys you know your own thoughts and everyone's got an opinion how far that can that should be going um end of the day though uh there has to be you know the the the the big egos in the room can always walk in overpower the little guys and say basically your opinions don't matter uh your you know thoughts on a topic don't matter that's what they try to do okay in any situation okay how many meetings have i been in over the years with big big law firms big senior partners coming into a meeting and looking at me and saying look we're going to overpower this guy we don't care end of the day usually that changes and i'm able to shift the balance of power but i'm happy for what's going on right now these communities standing up and taking charge uh so but that being said i want to go too long on this topic day a little bit off what i'm at usually with finance but i've been following this kevin o'leary project and again he's out now saying he owes the community an apology if you guys enjoy the content leave me a like don't forget to subscribe to the channel go get on board for the wrist map newsletter also chime in and look at rod's substack page we'll be on wednesday with a very cool show i'll probably be longer than normal probably go 45 minutes again like last time uh but you guys supported it you enjoyed the show and asked for me to bring rod back on so we're going to do that uh here in a couple days with that being said appreciate you guys watching uh don't forget to like and subscribe and share this stuff with people that you know uh with that That being said, I'll talk to you all soon. Bye.