TL;DR

O'Leary drew a comparison between data center water consumption and golf courses. Golf currently uses 4.6 times more, yet data center demand may surpass it by 2028 based on existing trends.

Kevin O'Leary has revived the golf course comparison. The Shark Tank investor, whose 40,000-acre Stratos data center initiative in Utah drew protests and prompted a governor's executive order, stated to Business Insider that AI data centers require significantly less water than U.S. golf courses. The claim holds true at present. The Golf Course Superintendents Association of America reports that U.S. courses consume 2.08 billion gallons daily for irrigation, while data centers use about 449 million gallons per day for cooling, per the Florida Water and Pollution Control Operators Association.

This creates a 4.6 times difference, and O'Leary rightly highlights it. However, the trends diverge sharply. Golf course water consumption remains steady or decreases as operators adopt drought-resistant grasses and recycled supplies. Data center water needs follow an exponential path fueled by AI training and inference tasks. Based on central estimates, overall data center water use should exceed golf levels around 2026 or 2027 and hit roughly 590 billion gallons by 2028, compared to golf's stable 425 billion gallons. Utah's governor issued an executive order in May establishing fresh development rules due to the Stratos Project, initially slated for 40,000 acres beside the shrinking Great Salt Lake.

O'Leary reduced the project size by 75 percent to 10,000 acres following a letter from the Republican state senate leader. He stated the site will employ a closed-loop chilling system without ongoing water intake. Virginia Tech experts noted insufficient disclosed information to confirm those assertions. A follow-up water rights application for the project was pulled in May. O'Leary also alleged, without proof, that Chinese-funded professional protesters fueled the resistance. He and Fox News now face a defamation lawsuit over those statements.

The golf analogy serves as a deflection framed as data. Nashville Zoo opposes a data center planned 50 yards from its animals, and communities nationwide resist projects that draw water, power, and land at industrial levels. No one suggests constructing 9 gigawatts of new golf courses near the Great Salt Lake. The key issue is not whether data centers use less water than golf today, but whether one facility in a stressed water basin should access resources needed for an ecosystem facing ecological strain. O'Leary holds an environmental studies degree and understands the distinction between a national average and a local aquifer.