Update • Includes apologies issued on air on Fox News channels.

Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary is walking back comments he made about people and organizations in Utah that have mounted opposition to his Box Elder County data center proposal.

Anchors on two Fox News channels followed by issuing rare, and similarly worded, apologies on air.

“Recently I appeared on various news programs and would like to clarify that I have no evidence that Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, Gabrielle Finlayson, Taylor Knuth or Josh Kanter are funded by China or the Chinese Communist Party,” O’Leary posted on his Facebook account Thursday afternoon.

A Salt Lake Tribune request to O’Leary’s spokesperson for further clarification was not immediately returned Thursday. Spokespeople for Elevate Strategies and Alliance for a Better Utah did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.

On Friday, according to a video posted by the watchdog group Media Matters for America, Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo read an apology on air, repeating O’Leary’s admission that he had no evidence to support his accusations when she interviewed him on May 11.

“Fox News Media is likewise aware of no evidence that they are funded by or acting at the direction of or in coordination with Chinese interests,” Bartiromo said, and concluded by noting that “Fox News Media apologizes for the error.”

On Saturday, on Fox News’s “Big Weekend Show,” host Johnny Joey Jones read the same on-air apology, which was transcribed by Mediaite. Jones gave the date of O’Leary’s appearance on that network as May 24.

O’Leary drew national attention to Elevate Strategies, a Utah political consulting firm, and the progressive nonprofit Alliance for a Better Utah, in appearances on Fox Business and other news channels. The “Shark Tank” star cited Finlayson at Elevate Strategies, and Knuth and Kanter at the alliance, by name, and called them “proxies for the Chinese government.”

“If they’re not, I want them to be able to defend their names,” O’Leary said on Fox Business. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

O’Leary’s comments created a “Streisand effect” for Elevate, leading Finlayson and her business partner, Jackie Morgan, to appear on several progressive media outlets to talk about opposition to the data center project.

“The only foreign agent here is a horrible Canadian multi-millionaire trying to ruin the environment in our country,” Finlayson said on The Tennessee Holler podcast on May 16.