You may know of him from Dragons’ Den — or Shark Tank — or Fox News. Now, Kevin O’Leary is promising to bring a $70 billion AI data centre to northwestern Alberta.
“$70 billion is probably the largest real estate project ever proposed in Canada. It’s certainly the largest data centre proposed in globally right now,” said O’Leary.
O’Leary, who calls himself Mr. Wonderful, announced Wonder Valley on Monday. It’s a 7,000 acre data centre park — to be built about 42 kilometres south of Grande Prairie in the MD of Greenview. Why there?
Well, in an interview with CityNews, O’Leary said it’s because of low taxes, a talented work force and an abundance of natural gas for power generation.
“We could probably be the world’s leaders in the development of AI technology and AI data centres because of one thing: our power. No one can compete with the power we have and that’s exactly what AI needs,” said O’Leary.
Local officials say Highway 40 is already being upgraded to handle the boom. Most of the workers — 3,000 to 5,000 during construction and about 1,000 ongoing — are expected to commute south from Grande Prairie.
“What you’re doing is just taking a really consistent economy and you’re just giving it a jolt. And that jolt is just diversification,” said Kyle Reiling, MD of Greenview executive director.
O’Leary says he’s already optioned the land; the power turbines are expected to be up and running in 24 months and the data centres will be built in phases.
He says he’s been working with the premier’s office on this, adding a likely change to a Conservative government in Ottawa is giving him and other investors a renewed confidence in doing business in Canada.
“This will provide thousands of jobs during the construction phase, over the next five to seven years. And many of those will be high-paying jobs. Luckily Alberta has a very high trained number of people who can do this,” said O’Leary.
Last week, the Alberta government announced a plan to attract $100 billion in AI data centre investment. O’Leary agrees that’s possible, and his project could go a long way to realizing that.