Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary isn't hunting for the small equity business in 2026. The TV personality has firmly turned toward what he sees as the ultimate commodity of the current tech revolution – the physical infrastructure required to keep it going.



<h3>When Geopolitics Meet Finance</h3>



O'Leary's key domestic project is the Stratos Project in Box Elder County, Utah. Spanning 40,000 acres, the site is designed to reach 9 GW of power—a figure the Wall Street Journal put as “equal to more than 20% of all data-center capacity currently operating in the U.S.”



Yet to avoid straining the national grid, O’Leary proposes burning natural gas on-site via the Ruby pipeline. The first phase would target 3GW, at a cost of roughly $45 billion. 



&#34;I think we're in a competition with the Chinese on economic superiority and military superiority,&#34; he noted, reasoning that the motivation is as much geopolitical as it is financial.



North of the border in his native Canada, O'Leary is doubling down with a proposed $70-billion, 7.5-gigawatt AI data center campus in Alberta. However, despite being exempt from provincial environmental impact assessment, the project still faces numerous local permits, including approval from the First Nation.



&#34;The minute we get the permit, that triggers a whole bunch of other activities in terms of how we finance it, when we start engineering, design, everything else,&#34; undeterred O'Leary told CBC News last month.



Despite bureaucracy, O'Leary sees Alberta as a great location for such a project, citing its combination of natural gas, water, and cold temperatures as the ideal recipe for cooling high-density AI clusters.



<h3>The $156 Billion Brick Wall</h3>



Regardless of its role in the ongoing AI revolution, the infrastructure gold rush has run into the not-in-my-back-yard movement. The Economist data shows that the NIMBY movement blocked $156 billion in domestic data-center projects in 2025. The bill could be even higher in 2026, as New York, Maine, Oklahoma, and Georgia have all moved to throttle or outright ban large-scale projects.



In Utah, the friction is already palpable. According to Moneywise, during a recent county commission meeting, more than 80 residents arrived with signs reading “People before profits,” forcing officials to delay a crucial vote.



They're aware that the Stratos project could more than double the 4 gigawatts currently used by the entire state of Utah. Even if natural gas can meet such an outsized demand, water usage remains a problem in a state facing the disappearance of the Great Salt Lake.



Despite its magic, the AI's insatiable appetite for water and power weighs heavily on the communities expected to host it.



<h3>A Dangerous Mismatch</h3>



The ongoing AI race has multiple moving parts. Even if one side of that chain surges forward, it cannot benefit unless everything else catches up.



The five “hyperscalers”—Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Meta (NASDAQ:META), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Oracle (NYSE:ORCL)—have tripled their combined capital spending to more than $750 billion. However, the companies that actually build the hardware—the chips, cooling systems, and networking gear—are being far more conservative.



According to The Economist, these hardware suppliers have increased their capital spending by only half, and they are on track to invest less than a third as much as the cloud giants this year. This capex gap means that even when a project like O'Leary's gets the green light, there may not be enough equipment to fill it.



&#34;There are no shortcuts,&#34; TSMC's (NYSE:TSM) CEO C.C. Wei told The Economist, explaining that building a new semiconductor fab takes between two and three years. His company targets to spend around $55 billion in 2026, about 34% higher than in 2025. Yet, compared to sales, the capex has actually declined from around 50% to about 33%.



Photo: Alicia Devine – Imagn images

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Kevin O'Leary is investing heavily in AI infrastructure, focusing on projects like the Stratos Project in Utah and a data center in Alberta, totaling $185 billion. However, these projects face challenges such as local opposition, environmental concerns, and hardware shortages. The NIMBY movement has already blocked $156 billion in data-center projects in 2025, and ongoing water and power demands complicate the situation. Additionally, while major tech companies are increasing capital spending, hardware suppliers are lagging, creating a potential gap in necessary equipment for AI projects.

- Kevin O'Leary is focusing on physical infrastructure for the tech sector, centering on the Stratos Project in Utah, which aims for 9 GW of power, equating to over 20% of U.S. data-center capacity.  
- His projects also include a $70 billion AI data center in Alberta, facing local permitting challenges despite its environmental exemption.  
- Additionally, the broader infrastructure development faces significant opposition, with the NIMBY movement having blocked $156 billion in domestic projects, raising concerns about water and energy needs amid the AI revolution.

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Kevin O'Leary's $115 Billion AI Bet Has More Than One Problem