The massive data center project proposed for Box Elder County isn’t the first “Wonder Valley.” And the original is running behind, according to multiple news reports.

Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary is backing a Wonder Valley — billed as the “largest AI computer data center park on Earth” — in his home country of Canada. The data center campus is proposed for thousands of acres in Alberta, a western province that is home to Banff, Calgary and Edmonton.

O’Leary Ventures announced the project roughly 25 miles south of Grande Prairie on Dec. 9, 2024. The initial press release does not mention exact benchmarks, but indicates the project will generate 7.5 gigawatts of electricity within five to 10 years.

Like the Box Elder proposal, the Wonder Valley project in Canada faced immediate opposition from locals. Leadership from the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation wrote in a letter that they first learned of the project from media reports.

The proposed Wonder Valley site overlaps with the tribe’s traditional territory. A treaty from 1899 requires “free, prior, and informed consent for a project of this scale,” Chief Sheldon Sunshine said in a statement.

The tribe also — unsuccessfully — appealed a water license for a roughly 4,900-acre-foot annual withdrawal from the Smoky River. That has parallels to what’s unfolding in Utah, where an application to transfer 1,900 acre-feet of water from ranching to the data center project was withdrawn.

O’Leary, who has had a history of ups and downs as an investor, says in the release that the project will be “in the ground and up and running sooner than any scale project of its kind.”

Yet the site is “fallow” and “less a valley than a wide, gentle slope, home to a pack of coyotes,” The Logic reported.

Construction was supposed to start this year, according to reporting by the Canadian business and technology newsroom, with a first operating phase in 2027.

Kyle Reiling, the executive director of industrial development for the Municipal District of Greenview, where the project is located, told Canadian publication The Logic in December that the hope is for construction to start in late 2028.

But Reiling also told the outlet that O’Leary Ventures has yet to finalize the purchase of the municipal land and also has not applied for any new permits or started formal consultations with Indigenous communities. The company has indicated that engaging with those communities was one of its “core values for the project.”

The project did recently eliminate one hurdle.

Alberta’s Ministry of Environment and Protected Areas ruled in April that the park is exempt from needing an environmental impact assessment, the CBC reported, but did say the project “must provide detailed technical assessments on impacts to air, land and water, and show the project can be built and operated safely” before it can secure the permits needed to start construction.

Plans O’Leary Ventures posted for the campus call for four phases of development totaling more than 7,000 acres.

There is an area set aside for wildlife preservation on the southeast tip of the campus.

A representative for O’Leary Ventures did not respond to a request for an update on the project and how it compares to the Utah proposal.