Kevin O'Leary Interview: Data Centers, Midterms and Mr. Wonderful Nickname | 8-7-26

ongoing, anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 very high-paying jobs. And so that's a big factor. And let's take a data center like the one I'm proposing in Box Elder County, Utah. It's made the national news. No question about that. The budget there for Box Elder is about $97 million a year. So in the first year of operation, we'll be about 30 million of that. We'll be one of the largest contributors to the county in just terms of dollars, taxpaying dollars. And then once we scale it up and it's at full capacity, we'll be over 100% of the budget. And that happened in Langley. You know, that happened in Virginia too. If you talk to people that live in Virginia, the first locations after 9-11 when they started building those data centers. It's 40% of the local budget. So, yeah, there's a lot of people unhappy, but 40% of the local budgets, a lot of money, a lot of jobs. And so I think the economic facts are what the president was talking about last week saying, wait a second, everybody. Let's dig into the numbers here and figure out what's going on, because I think that's very important. So those numbers, are those driven by construction workers, income taxes, sales taxes? Is that the bulk of that? Or is it revenue being thrown off of the data center itself to the municipalities and the counties? It's both because you start with the construction jobs and all the workers that are coming in to build the facility. And then on an ongoing basis, you're paying taxes and operating business. So you're throwing that off. And then you've got all the people working there, 1,500 to 2,000 in perpetuity, homes, kids, children, dry cleaners, restaurants. I mean, it builds up communities. It's a good thing. And we're not talking about building a chemical factory here. This is, data centers are pretty clean because the way you cool these chips these days are like the radiator in your car. It's a closed loop. And the technology to turn that gas into electricity, which is where a lot of these are going now. Certainly the Utah one that I'm proposing is going to use the Ruby pipeline. And to generate, the actual technology is so much cleaner, so much quieter, air-cooled combination with water. much less. And the other thing is you can't circumvent the EPA on air quality or any of it. You've got to get your permits. And that's what we're going to do. So we'll be submitting our water permit in probably the end of August this month. And people start to realize, hey, wait a second. This looks pretty good. Kevin O'Leary is joining us here on the show. So last thing on that, a couple of the things I want to do touch on here, Kevin, with you. It is the data center conversation against China. I mean, I was looking at it the other day. We've got like 5,000. They've got 500. Had they been outpacing us recently? Or is it just one of those things where we want to stay this far ahead of them in this game as the AI race continues on? Let me clean up those numbers. You're right.

If you just look at physical locations, but much of what China built and what we built early on was just cloud compute. In other words, where does your email go? Where does your spreadsheet go? Where does your messages go? That's just cloud compute capacity. What we're concerned about and what everybody should be concerned about is the ability to scale out AI. So in the last two years, they've built 400 gigawatts of power generation. We've built nothing, basically, because we've been stuck in this narrative of a permit. and new power. And from that, what they're building on power, they're building these AI compute centers. And that's where you should be concerned because the war you're watching play out in the Middle East right now is the first AI war in history. Those really precision ordinance, how do you think those are controlled? They're controlled from servers stateside. I don't know where. They could be Texas. They could be in Jacksonville, Florida. They could be in Langley. You don't know. And there's a reason you don't know. It's defense. But the point is, you want to be the country that has that first, not the Chinese. Not that I don't like the Chinese people. I don't like their government. I don't like what they're planning to do. And a lot of the future of warfare will be robotics, AI controlled. We're talking about the interests of the country from a defense point of view. So we need capacity. And we've got to give some portion of that capacity. I suggest 20% of it to the government to do what they have to do on defense. And, you know, the rest, the 80% will run the economy. But the Chinese... These dudes have a plan. I'm sorry. And I'm just one voice. But listen to Senator Cotton, listen to the president, listen to the administration, listen to the Department of War. They're getting nervous about these Chinese guys. How about the power side just briefly as well? I mean, that's come up, especially in rural communities. Hey, is this going to increase power costs? I know it's not what it used to be, but is that a legitimate concern or is that part of this as you see it, you know, the misinformation campaign that is happening on this front with data centers? Well, power is the economy. You can't have an economy without power. We're tapped out on the grid. I am not against the president's interests where he says, look, here's the new deal for you, data center developer guys. You bring your own power. And then you give some back to the grid. Makes total sense to me. So in the case of Box Elder again, in Utah, we're going to bring the power and we're happy to sell it back to the grid to keep prices down because we're going to build more power than we need. There's no question about it. And we'll give back. And everybody should be doing that. We're helping. It costs, let me just give you an idea what this costs. It's $16 billion just for the first phase.

50% in debt, 50% in equity. That's a ton of money coming into Utah. I don't know many states that don't want that kind of economic development. Then we build the power first, and then we tap it back to the grid. I mean, that's what we should be doing everywhere. And then people say, wait a second, this holds down my power bill in my local community, in the library, in the hospital. Yes. That's what we should be doing because we desperately need this power. So that's the first part of communicating it back, and that's what we're going to do. I'm not just saying me. Everybody's going to have to do that. We are really, really hitting the top end of the grid's capacity for the greatest economy on earth. We can't run out of power. So it's not just data centers. It's power first, data centers second. When you look at the next 90 days or so until these midterms, Kevin, Are you sensing, I know Wall Street's doing well, the markets are doing well, but are you sensing a broader Main Street economic pullback and how concerning should that be specifically for the president and his party going into these midterms? Well, I mean, there's something, there's a big disconnect here. I mean, people ask me, why is the S&P and the Dow hitting new highs? Well, because the economy's on fire. It's remarkable. And maybe Trump's the luckiest president in history because he did, he had no idea AI was coming and would provide all this productivity enhancement and margin enhancement in every small and large business in America. Because he put on tariffs, which, you know, basically have been canceled out by AI. That's what's happened here. And so he's just lucky. And yet he hasn't been able to translate the success of what most companies, and I'm very familiar with companies, five to 500 employees, that's who I finance, that's my army. We're having the best quarter we've ever had. And because the economy's doing well, the consumer, people were concerned about AI replacing jobs. We have a very tight labor market now, and wages are starting to go up. But that message is not getting out there. So I think the administration has to get out there. and seeing the merits of what they've achieved by the numbers. Because the other problem is part of it's from the tariffs and part of it's from the stuff that's been going on in the Middle East. We got inflation here over 3%. And the target for the Fed is too, so they may have to raise rates. And that's tough. And we also got to get this thing worked out in the Middle East. You know, we've got to get gasoline down. in prices. It's the number one input to every family and every business. Energy's number one input. And so I'd like to see oil prices down in the mid-60s. And I think that'll happen immediately after they work this deal out. I mean, I think everybody in the world wants this deal worked out. Enough of this thing over there. That's enough. And so everybody wants to see that worked out. Ken, if it gets worked out, I mean, ideally, like you said, as soon as possible. How quickly are we looking at these energy prices coming down when it comes to the elections in November? I promise you, El Pronto. What will happen is oil will break 70 right away because there's a lot. We don't have an oil supply problem stateside. It's the world price that's got a problem because the strait of her moves is not open to let boats come and go. You need 100 of these a day going through their pre-war. That's what we had.

And so whether it's worked out with some kind of a fee, it doesn't matter. Japan needs the oil. China needs the oil. Otherwise, they're just supporting the Russian economy, and they're at war with Ukraine. Oil is a global priced commodity, and as soon as it breaks 70 bucks, gasoline prices stateside will come back down. Now, the highest prices are always California because that's a poorly run state, and everybody knows that by now. But everywhere else, it'll start to come down really fast. And the president knows that and his party knows that. And that's going to be important for every race in the country. You know, there's a, what works in America is entrepreneurship. That's why it's the most successful economy. 250 years of success. There's no doubt about it. The American dream is what we export, and we've got to keep doing that. So we don't want to get too far away from that. I understand swinging to the left, swinging to the right, dead center, down the middle, support the American entrepreneur to build a business. Some of these businesses start small, get really big, and we lead the world in everything because we believe in the American dream and entrepreneurship. So every time I hear policy that's whacked out crazy, I say to myself, I don't worry because I know that will eventually fall to the wayside because it doesn't work. The only thing that works is the American dream. How about this? When it comes to what you're looking at as it relates to the tariffs, you just touched on them right now. We know there have been some refunds from the government to some of the major corporations. Should the president back off on these things? Have you had that conversation with him and has it gone anywhere? Everybody's had a conversation with them about that. There are certain things that we shouldn't tariff. Let me give you an example. We don't want to tariff oil we're importing. What's the point of that? If we're importing oil, like from the Canadians, for example, why put a tariff on that? Well, they didn't. That was smart. You don't want to tariff stuff you have to have. If there's a commodity we don't make, like pineapples, don't put a tariff on that. What's the point? I can see when somebody's trying to dump something into the market. You can tariff that. Here's another one. You know, we're talking about nuclear power being the future and, you know, getting back on board with that with these new mini nukes. Well, you need 50 million pounds of uranium a year to do that, just domestically. Who's got the uranium? A place called Saskatchewan up in Canada. Where they're going to, they're just opening a mine next week that's going to produce 30 million pounds a year. Nobody has that. And they're friendlies up there. Canada's a friendly place. We should cut a deal, no tariffs on uranium. Why would we want that? I mean, that's crazy, because right now we're buying uranium from bad guys. That's not good. You want to solve supply chain management issues? Let's buy uranium from allies.

That's another example. So I'm just saying they've got to tweak the tariff policy so that you don't tariff stuff you don't have. And that's what the administration should do in the next two years. That's my advice. Not tariff everything. Tariff the stuff that you can afford to put a tariff on because it's being dumped or you make it domestically already. But not stuff you don't have. All right. Last thing for you, Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful. I was looking this up before the interview. The way the Mr. Wonderful nickname came to be, I guess it was just in passing an offhanded comment from Barbara Corcoran, you're of course co-host there on Shark Tank. Do you like the nickname after all these years or have you just come to accept it? You know. First of all, I love Barbara very much. She's a very good cook. And whenever I get to New York, we often get together and she cooks. She's great. But I'll tell you the truth. The only reason she gets the shark tank set on time every year is I buy her a new broom. That's how she flies down. But the Mr. Wonderful thing. I don't know what to say about it. I remember years ago, I landed in L.A., and the driver had the sign up, and it said, Mr. Wonderful on it. So I walked over to him and said, hi, I'm Kevin O'Leary. He said, no, no, I'm here for Mr. Wonderful. I said, I am Mr. Wonderful. You don't know my name? You said, no, you're Mr. Wonderful. I said, okay, okay. I mean, that's how bad it's gotten. So I just live with it. I can tell you this, though. My wife does not call me Mr. Wonderful. Oh, that's. She's probably got a different nickname that might be a little different from that one. What does one trip to Israel do? One trip changes people's faith, their identity, their perspective. One trip changes the response when people chant from the river to the sea. One trip changes how people see right and wrong. One trip changes the idea of home. One trip changes everything. And one donation is all it takes. Meet Keith, loving dad, board game champ, bus driving pro. I drive 65,000 miles in my bus each year. If people knew what I know, lives could be saved. Like how there are some things I simply can't see. On my route the other day, a car tried to sneak past me and ends up right in my blind spot. I turned slowly, so accident avoided. But no car should be in the blind spot for a 40,000-pound bus. It's our roads. It's our safety. Visit www.sharethe road safely.gov.

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