Stratos Hyperscale Data Center: 9GW AI Compute Campus Box Elder County Utah

Status: County Approved (May 2026) / Regulatory Review & Environmental Permitting   |   Location: Hansel Valley & Locomotive Valley, Box Elder County, UT 84337, United States


Project Overview

The Stratos Project is an ambitious $35 billion–$50 billion hyperscale artificial intelligence data center initiative planned across approximately 40,000 acres in remote Box Elder County, Utah. Designed as an off-grid digital infrastructure development, the project is intended to operate independently of the conventional public electricity grid, providing a dedicated power and computing ecosystem capable of supporting extremely large-scale AI workloads. The master plan envisions approximately 90 large data center facilities purpose-built for large language model (LLM) training, hyperscale cloud computing, high-performance computing, and national security and defense-related processing requirements. With a planned capacity of up to 9 GW, Stratos represents an exceptionally large proposed concentration of computing infrastructure, reflecting the rapidly increasing electricity requirements associated with advanced AI systems and dense accelerator deployments. A defining characteristic of the project is its integrated energy strategy, with the campus planned to leverage the adjacent Ruby Pipeline, a major natural gas transportation system extending across hundreds of miles, as a direct fuel source for on-site power generation. Dedicated natural gas generation would allow the development to produce substantial electricity locally rather than depending on constrained regional transmission networks, potentially improving control over power availability and supporting continuous high-density computing operations. The remote location and expansive land footprint also provide substantial space for phased development, security infrastructure, energy facilities, cooling systems, and supporting operations while reducing dependence on densely populated metropolitan environments. The campus is envisioned to serve both commercial and government-oriented computing requirements, including AI model development, cloud services, data analytics, defense processing, and intelligence workloads requiring substantial computational resources and resilient infrastructure. By integrating dedicated energy generation with a purpose-built hyperscale campus, Stratos represents an emerging approach to AI data center development in which power generation and computing capacity are planned as a unified system. If fully developed, the project would establish a major AI infrastructure hub in Utah and demonstrate the potential scale of off-grid computing campuses designed to overcome conventional grid capacity constraints.


Quick Facts

FieldValue
Project NameStratos Hyperscale Data Center: 9GW AI Compute Campus Box Elder County Utah
LocationHansel Valley & Locomotive Valley, Box Elder County, UT 84337, United States
StatusCounty Approved (May 2026) / Regulatory Review & Environmental Permitting
CommissioningPhased Rollout Target (Initial Phase ~2,000 acres, scaling to multi-gigawatt buildout)
Total IT Load9,000.0 MW (9.0 GW) Critical Power Allocation
Total Capacity~40,000 Acres (~62 sq miles) master-planned site footprint across ~90 hyperscale data center buildings
Tier LevelTier IV / Concurrently Maintainable High-Density Infrastructure
Project TypeOff-Grid Standalone Hyperscale AI Training & Defense Compute Campus

City Profile

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City NameBox Elder County
Population~58,000
Urban Agglomeration~65,000
City GDPApprox. USD 2.5–3 Billion
Per Capita IncomeApprox. USD 30,000
City TierTier 3
Key StrengthsAerospace & defense manufacturing, agriculture, logistics & transportation, food processing, proximity to Salt Lake City, strong industrial base

Companies Involved

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Developer / Operator O'Leary Digital
Strategic Infrastructure Partner Box Elder County Commission, Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA), Hill Air Force Base / Defense Infrastructure Partners
Construction Contractor Specialized U.S. Mission-Critical Mega-Infrastructure EPCs & Industrial Contractors
MEP Engineering Mission-Critical Engineering & On-Site Power Generation Specialists
Network Connectivity High-capacity carrier-neutral dark fiber connections routing directly to major intercity backbones and national defense cloud networks.
Power Infrastructure Off-grid power supply utilizing dedicated on-site Combined-Cycle Combustion Turbines (CCCT) and reciprocating gas engines powered by direct taps into the Ruby Pipeline, backed by industrial UPS systems and on-site emergency generation.

Technical Specifications

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Power Capacity9.0 GW Dedicated On-Site Generation Capacity
UPS Redundancy2N / N+1 High-Density Static UPS Architecture
Cooling System Closed-loop water-wise liquid cooling and Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling (DLC) infrastructure engineered to handle extreme high-density GPU server racks.
Connectivity Sub-millisecond dedicated fiber routes linking the campus to regional military bases, internet exchanges, and cloud processing clusters.
PUE Target < 1.20 Annualized Operational Design PUE
Energy Mix Dedicated on-site natural gas generation, with long-term opportunities for microgrid integration, solar, and battery storage.

Milestones

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Announcement Q1–Q2 2026
Construction Start Target 2026–2027
Phase 1 Go-Live Target 2028
Full Buildout Multi-Phase Buildout over 10+ Years

Investment Details

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Total InvestmentEstimated $35,000,000,000 – $50,000,000,000 USD Total Capital Investment
Funding Private Investment Syndicate / Infrastructure Venture Funds

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