Kevin O’Leary — higher generally known as “Mr. Wonderful” from ABC’s “Shark Tank” — made a shock look at Knowledge Heart World 2025 in Washington, D.C. What’s a enterprise capitalist doing at a significant IT occasion? He’s constructing the world’s largest AI factories, and he’s prepared to speak about it.
The undertaking, known as Surprise Valley, is a large off-grid AI knowledge heart below development in Alberta’s Municipal District of Greenview in Canada. Objective-built for AI workloads, the ability will span 6,000 acres and boast a staggering 7.5 gigawatts of energy capability. The preliminary section of 1.5 GW is predicted to finish within the 2027-2028 timeframe at a value of $2 billion; the rest will probably be added progressively over the subsequent few years.
“Data centers are today’s gold rush,” stated O’Leary throughout his keynote. “AI is in high demand, and the strongest market is in companies of 5 to 500 employees.”
Bypassing prolonged regulatory and grid interconnect delays
O’Leary defined how tough it may be to construct and energy a brand new knowledge heart.
He stated the regulatory atmosphere is tough; there are numerous allowing and approval hurdles to beat. Utilities want to take half a decade or extra to ship energy to new prospects. He gave an instance of an information heart asking for 250 MW now and 250 MW extra in two years. The response: 25 MW was all they might get — however not for an additional three years.
“If you want to attract investors, you have to get a project operational within 24 months,” stated O’Leary. “We had to figure out how to pull this off when there was no power available on the grid.”
Answer: Discover sources of stranded energy, particularly massive portions of pure gasoline that won’t have easy accessibility to the market. In that order, he discovered the perfect sources: Alberta, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Virginia.
“Alberta, Canada, is the motherload in North America with about 10 times the natural gas of all others,” he stated.
Creating an information heart with sustainability and residents in thoughts
Surprise Valley is huge on sustainability and neighborhood worth. In addition to being the world’s greatest knowledge heart, the campus will probably be surrounded by nature trails and wilderness areas. It could actually function solely off the grid, however the homeowners plan to offer energy to the local people.
The area has an abundance of every thing required: land, pure gasoline, fiber, folks, infrastructure, an area polytechnic, hospitals, and extra.
“The capital cost of an AI data center is so high that you have to build big,” stated O’Leary. “We are looking for other sites with similar characteristics to Alberta and where the government is keen to help.”
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The “Shark Tank” celeb complained to the Knowledge Heart World viewers in regards to the poor gross sales job the trade has achieved in recent times. New knowledge heart tasks steadily provoke intense native antagonism; he really helpful a change in strategy.
As a substitute of taking energy from an already constrained grid and driving up electrical energy charges in a neighborhood, go in with a plan that features including energy to the world — and have sufficient energy obtainable to present a few of it to the locals so their electrical energy charges don’t rise.
“Arrive in town to build more power for them at low cost, to provide lots of construction jobs for locals, to set up training of technicians who will man the facility, to eliminate flaring of natural gas to lower emissions, and to bring in tax revenue by buying stranded natural gas assets,” stated O’Leary. “Everything comes from the availability of power in abundance. Stranded natural gas is inexpensive, clean, and we can even put the carbon underground rather than emitting it into the atmosphere.”
