Who he is publicly

• Kevin O'Leary: Canadian-born investor; co-host on ABC's Shark Tank as "Mr. Wonderful"; founder and Chairman of O'Leary Ventures, a Miami-based venture firm with a portfolio of roughly 40 companies.
• Listed as Chairman of O'Leary Digital in the February 18, 2026 joint-venture press release announcing the Wonder Valley Utah campus.
• Public face of the Utah project. KSL, Deseret News, Salt Lake Tribune, KPCW, Fox News, Tom's Hardware, Quartz, and Moneywise have all framed Stratos around O'Leary's name and remarks.

In his own words

• "My job is going to tell the world what we've done here and what we're going to do here and set an example…" (KPCW, April 24, 2026.)
• "We're in a race with [China]… it's hard to get permitted, it's hard to build a data center." (Deseret News, April 24, 2026.)
• O'Leary has framed the campus on Fox News and AOL coverage as a strategic-AI counterweight to China and uses the brand "Wonder Valley Utah," echoing the name of his proposed Alberta facility.

The corporate vehicle: three names, no confirmed Utah filing

• "O'Leary Digital": the public brand and the name on the JV side of the project as described by MIDA and trade press.
• "O'Leary Digital Limited": the entity that signed the February 18, 2026 PR Newswire JV release. The "Limited" suffix is non-U.S. corporate vocabulary; it points toward UK, Bermuda, Cayman, or BVI registration. Not confirmed against any registry.
• "O'Leary Digital Utah Development Company": the name KSL has used in coverage of the Box Elder hearings.
• Three different names. No Utah Division of Corporations record locatable under any of them. The domain olearydigital.com was registered December 16, 2022, consistent with the brand existing as a parked domain before the December 2024 Wonder Valley Alberta announcement. Deseret News describes O'Leary Digital as a spinoff of O'Leary Ventures.

Paul L. Palandjian (CEO)

Listed as CEO in the JV release. Prior career: roughly 15 years at Boston-based Intercontinental Real Estate Corporation, the firm founded by his father, where his brother Peter Palandjian is now Chairman and CEO. Paul left in 2006 and subsequently founded Somerset Equity Advisors LLC; served as Senior Advisor and Managing Director at U.K.-based Trinity Group Limited; and as Managing Director at Trinity Security & Defense Advisors LLC. No prior data-center project is publicly attributed to Palandjian.

Carl Agren (CEO, HPC and AI Data Centers)

Described in trade press as CEO of "HPC and AI Data Centers" within the O'Leary Digital orbit. Confirmed history: co-founder and former COO of G42 Cloud (now Core42) in Abu Dhabi, credited with developing roughly 100 MW of AI and HPC capacity. Subsequently CEO of Phoenix Group / Phoenix Technology (Abu Dhabi-listed; ~$370M IPO in December 2023; ~400 MW of crypto-mining capacity). In September 2025, appointed director and COO of NIP Group's Digital Computing Division. The specific named project Agren personally led is not separately disclosed in the sources reviewed.

Frank McCourt / McCourt Partners (funding partner)

Frank H. McCourt Jr. is Executive Chairman of McCourt Global; named in trade-press coverage of the broader Wonder Valley platform as a funding partner with a reported $100M initial commitment. Trade press also references Guggenheim Partners.

Track record worth knowing: McCourt was owner and chairman of the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2004 to 2012. The franchise filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2011 and was sold in March 2012 to a Magic Johnson, Stan Kasten, and Guggenheim Partners group for ~$2 billion, at the time the highest price ever paid for a professional sports team. McCourt founded the non-profit Project Liberty in 2021, focused on a decentralized social-networking protocol.

The data-center pivot, in order

• Wonder Valley Alberta: announced December 2024 in the Municipal District of Greenview, framed publicly as a $70 billion AI campus. Has not broken ground. Alberta provincially declined to require an environmental-impact assessment. The Logic and The Energy Mix have reported the project is "more than a year behind its aggressive original schedule."
• Earlier sites considered: West Virginia, North Dakota, and Niagara Falls NY were evaluated and not selected. Niagara Falls is described in trade press as an earlier "setback" before the current strategy.
• Wonder Valley Utah / Stratos: public announcement April 24, 2026; pre-construction; Box Elder County consent vote tabled twice as of April 27, 2026.

Prior business ventures across O'Leary's career

None of the items below is a real-estate, generation, or data-center asset. They are listed because they are the documented basis for O'Leary's public investor track record, which is part of the project's pitch.

• SoftKey Software, then The Learning Company, sold to Mattel. O'Leary co-founded SoftKey, which became The Learning Company. Sold to Mattel in 1999 for $4.2B. The acquisition contributed to a $184M Mattel Q4 1999 loss and a 2003 shareholder-suit settlement of approximately $122M. Per O'Leary's own self-stated account, his proceeds from the deal were ~$6M.
• StorageNow: Canadian self-storage venture.
• O'Leary Funds: sold to Canoe Financial in 2015. Received a regulatory penalty from Quebec's Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) in 2014.
• O'Shares Investments / O'Shares ETFs: launched July 2015; ETF business sold to ALPS.
• O'Leary Mortgages: closed April 2014.
• O'Leary Fine Wines: branded wine line, partnership with Vintage Wine Estates.
• O'Leary Ventures portfolio: ~40 companies; notable disclosed exits include WonderFi and Plated; portfolio acquisitions include Basepaws and Wicked Good Cupcakes.
• Beanstox: retail-investing app; O'Leary serves as Chairman.

These items are factual public record. They are not by themselves a judgment on Stratos. They are the actual track record a reader is entitled to consider when evaluating a $70B+ project pitch tied to a single investor's name.

What West GenCo is

• Self-reported founding year: 2025, per the company's own LinkedIn page.
• Domain westgenco.com registered October 10, 2025. That is roughly four months before the JV announcement (Feb 18, 2026) and six months before the public Stratos unveiling (Apr 24, 2026).
• JV role: the press release describes West GenCo as overseeing "permitting and state-level regulatory coordination" for the project.
• LinkedIn industry classification: "Real Estate." 2 to 10 employees; privately held.
• No Utah Division of Corporations record was located for "West GenCo" under any standard name variant. Manual searches by the project author returned no hit.

Stated power model

• On-site, off-grid, natural-gas-fired generation via the Ruby Pipeline, a 680-mile interstate gas line from Wyoming to Oregon crossing northern Utah.
• Trade press refers to this as a "Shadow Grid" or behind-the-meter model. It explicitly does not draw from Rocky Mountain Power's regulated grid; that is the regulatory mechanism authorized by Utah's SB 132 (2025), covered on the Government page.
• No signed gas-supply or transportation contract with the Ruby Pipeline operator has been publicly disclosed.
• No FERC, Utah Public Service Commission, or Utah Division of Air Quality filings referencing West GenCo and Stratos have been located. A 3 GW (and ultimately 7.5 to 9 GW) gas plant would normally require Title V or PSD permitting.

The three named principals (per westgenco.com)

• Austin Pritchett: Co-founder & Managing Partner. Cornell MBA. Prior career documented as SunTrust Robinson Humphrey investment banking, then real-estate finance roles. Co-founder & Managing Partner of Elevate Development Partners (Highland, UT, residential, commercial, and mixed-use master-plan developer with a self-stated $800M pipeline). Manager of West Meadows Investment Partners, LLC (Highland, UT; SEC Form D 2024; $750k raised). No prior data-center or power-generation experience documented in public sources.
• Darwin Fielding: Co-founder & Managing Partner. Manager of Qelo Capital LLC (Lehi, UT) and Qelo Fund 10, LP (Delaware LP; SEC Form D 2019; $100M offering). Prior affiliations include Blue Sky Energy Partners and White Energy Capital. The only principal with any documented prior energy-sector affiliation, but the operating status, projects, and current activity of those entities have not been independently verified.
• Tate Murphey: Partner. Also Partner & Head of Analysis at Elevate Development Partners, the direct corporate linkage between West GenCo and Pritchett's other venture. Self-described career: regional Utah real-estate development firm, then Utah real-estate PE associate (student housing, multifamily). No specific employer names disclosed publicly. No prior data-center or power-generation experience documented.

The signals that tie SPDC to West GenCo

• Domain spdcdev.com registered October 9, 2025, one day before westgenco.com. Different registrar (Wix vs GoDaddy) and different nameservers, so not a single bulk registration, but the consecutive-day timing strongly indicates coordinated brand setup by the same operators.
• Same Alpine, Utah footer address: "395 South, Alpine UT 84004." See the address card below.
• Two principals shared with West GenCo: Austin Pritchett (CEO of SPDC; Co-founder & Managing Partner at West GenCo) and Tate Murphey (CDO of SPDC; Partner at West GenCo).
• No Utah Division of Corporations record was located for "S&P Data Center Development," "SPDC," or any plausible variant.

One principal unique to SPDC: Mike Salvage (CRO)

Director at H5 Data Centers (Kirkland, WA-based); prior NTT America, Time Warner Cable Business Class, Cbeyond, and IX Reach; recently a Strategic Advisor at Portman Partners. Whether his SPDC role is full-time, part-time, or advisory has not been publicly disclosed by either employer.

The Alpine, Utah footer address

Both westgenco.com and spdcdev.com list the same footer address: 395 South, Alpine UT 84004. The full address is 395 S Main Street, a multi-tenant professional office building. Confirmed tenants include AGS Law, PLLC (Suite 104), Oak Haven Therapy, and multiple financial advisors in suites 203 and 206. Neither West GenCo nor SPDC appears on any public tenant roster of the building. The principals' actual operating bases are Elevate's Highland, UT office and Qelo Capital's Lehi, UT office. The Alpine address is most consistent with a mailing or nominal-headquarters use.

SPDC's stated projects do not match Stratos

• Mountainwest 2GW: 7,500 acres, target Q1 2027
• Utah-Nevada 1GW: 2,200 acres, target Q4 2026
• Southern Utah 500MW: 800 acres, target Q1 2027
• Texas 200MW: 175 acres, target Q4 2026

None of these matches Stratos's stated 3 GW Phase 1 / 7.5 to 9 GW full / ~40,000 acres. Whether any SPDC project maps onto Stratos, is a subset, or is a separate venture is not publicly disclosed. None of these four projects is operating, under construction, or completed.

No prior data-center or large-scale generation track record on the energy side

None of the four named principals across West GenCo and SPDC, Pritchett, Fielding, Murphey, Salvage, has built or operated a data-center campus or a large-scale power-generation asset before. Their documented prior work is in residential and commercial real-estate land development (Pritchett, Murphey at Elevate), real-estate private equity (Fielding at Qelo), and data-center sales and commercial (Salvage at H5 Data Centers). Fielding's prior Blue Sky Energy Partners and White Energy Capital affiliations are the only documented energy-sector ties on either side, and neither's current operating status has been independently verified.

West GenCo's site lists four "locations under consideration" (SW Wyoming 3,600 ac; N Utah 12,700 ac; SW New Mexico 5,600 ac; S Central Arizona 5,200 ac). None is operating, under construction, or completed. The closest to Stratos's ~40,000-acre footprint is the 12,700-acre N Utah site, still less than a third of Stratos.