Will Utah lead or be left behind by the AI revolution?

Transformational change is coming to the Beehive State — driven by artificial intelligence.

According to the man tasked with crafting the state’s business strategy through this challenge, Utah’s economic future might hinge on a handful of “once-in-a-generation opportunities.”

Jefferson Moss was appointed as executive director of the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity in May. As a former state lawmaker, Moss spearheaded initiatives on AI, infrastructure and workforce development.

In his view, projects he helped push along at the Capitol — the innovation district at The Point, and the Utah Inland Port system— represent unprecedented investments that set the state up to successfully bridge AI disruptions.

Now, as head of the office overseeing state corporate recruitment and startup resources, Moss aims to help Utah take advantage of the impending economic sea change without losing the community connection that makes the state special.

“We’re the No. 1 economy in the nation,” Moss said in an interview with the Deseret News. “But how do you take that and make sure we’re looking 10-20 years out from now?”

To answer that question, Moss looks to the policy decisions of past administrations that he says enabled Utah to become an economic powerhouse. Gov. Spencer Cox is intent on keeping that trend alive, Moss said, with a focus on energy and innovation.

But the stakes for Utah economic development have become undeniably higher than past decades, according to Moss, amid exploding growth, an approaching Olympic games and an unfolding technological revolution.

And experts of all stripes agree: AI’s economic earthquake is already beginning to shape every aspect of Utah’s industrial, commercial and educational landscape in dramatic ways.

What AI will do to Utah

AI sits at the “top of the list” of economic opportunities and hurdles the state will face over the next several years, according to Derek Miller, who is the CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber, the state’s largest business association.

“AI is totally going to change everything,” Miller said.

The shift to Utah’s economy could very well be the largest since the golden spike linked Utah to the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, or since the pioneers first entered Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Miller said.

Not only is AI completely remaking the state’s Software as a Service tech sector — which represents 10% of the GDP and nearly a quarter million jobs — it is already beginning to displace employees around the country.

Researchers predict that AI integration into the economy could replace anywhere from 5-30% of tasks, potentially resulting in huge boosts to GDP — at least for regions that are ready to leverage it.

But there’s “no guarantee” Utah will be one of them, Miller said.

“We’ve got to be really strategic. We’ve got to be really deliberate. We’ve got to be visionary,” Miller said. “Otherwise we’ll be left behind, scratching our heads and wondering, ‘Wow, how did we go from the No. 1 state down to something much less than that?’”

There are two prerequisites that will permit Utah to surf the AI wave instead of falling beneath the tsunami: according to Miller, “it starts and ends with workforce” — training college grads to use AI as a tool.

According to Barclay Burns — Utah Valley University’s chief AI officer, and the assistant dean of applied AI at the school’s engineering department — “energy is going to be the key of all of it.”

If Utah can produce enough power to support AI’s insatiable demand for electrons, it will open up the state to a “massive infusion of capital,” totaling trillions of dollars globally, according to Burns.

Right now, Utah appears well prepared to take advantage of an AI “convergence,” Burns said, where generative AI technology takes over automated manufacturing, synthetic drug discovery and banking cybersecurity.

But Burns said if elected officials, industry leaders and academic faculty don’t get aligned in their efforts to commercialize research and update infrastructure — and quick — then this opportunity will pass the state by.

“If Utah gets left out of the evolution towards the age of AI,” Burns fears, “then more resources will flow to those places that are able to create value in these new emerging technologies.”

Building AI infrastructure

The governor, and his economic development adviser, are well aware of what’s on the line and are focused on “accelerating the innovation economy that we’ve been building in Utah,” Moss said.

Utah recently broke ground on two of the largest economic development projects in state history.

During the state’s 2025 legislative session, lawmakers approved $73 million for the construction of “Convergence Hall,” a new state-owned complex at The Point in Draper, which is already well underway.

Moss, who previously served as The Point’s innovation district project director, envisions the hub becoming the largest “innovation campus” in the western United States where investors, students, professors and government agencies will be housed together.

“We call it ‘bumpability’ — that having different industries bumping into each other, coordinating, having policy people, having industry people, just having a place to come together and convene is a big driver in innovation,” Moss said.

Amid employment uncertainty caused by AI, the state hopes to generate thousands of jobs through the Utah Inland Port, a massive project located west of the Salt Lake City airport, intended to make Utah the center of shipping via air, road and train.

The Inland Port, which started significant expansion earlier this year, along with The Point, will make Utah’s economy more diverse and resilient as AI, and fluctuating tariff policies, shake up global supply chains, Moss believes.

“I think both of those are just once-in-a-generation opportunities,” Moss said. “The Port already is becoming a massive economic development driver for our state.”

On energy, Utah is literally leading the nation in developing nuclear energy policy, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, and geothermal energy, with its internationally unique project based in Milford.

Even with Utah’s strong preexisting energy portfolio, this innovation is necessary because each interaction with AI — which now dominates customer service, online shopping and internet search — sucks up energy, according to Emy Lesofski, the director of the Utah Office of Energy Development.

For the first time in decades, the United States is set to experience a dramatic increase in “energy load growth,” with annual energy use projected to increase by over 50% before 2035, largely due to AI data centers.

The governor’s commitment to double Utah energy production over next decade through “Operation Gigawatt,” and his “Energy Superabundance” initiative to achieve federal permitting reform, are putting the state on a path to “meet the moment,” Lesofski said.

“If you look at the landscape right now, and the increase in the utilization of AI for all sorts of aspects of your life, if that trend continues along with other natural growth, we need more energy resources,” Lesofski said. “And so we in Utah are doing our best to facilitate making that happen in a responsible, sustainable, clean, affordable way.”

Can Utah stay collaborative?

For Moss, the next steps are clear.

The state must continue to make targeted investments with deep tech grants to support university workforce initiatives to prepare the next generation of innovators. It must build on what has been recognized nationally as model AI legislation.

It must create clear lines of communication between government agencies and the private sector so companies can get quickly “plugged into” the Utah ecosystem. And it must be more intentional about how trade missions benefit specific Utah industries.

But there is one obstacle — what Miller calls the top “risk” for the Utah economy — that could hobble all other efforts to increase quality of life and to keep homegrown talent in the state: a lack of affordable housing.

Over the past decade, the median sales price of a single-family home in Utah has more than doubled, from less than $230,000 to more than $560,000, according to the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Institute.

Since 2021, the ratio of home price to household income — a standard measurement of home affordability — has been greater than 5, indicating a “severely unaffordable market,” a recent Kem C. Gardner Institute report found.

The solution — removing barriers to housing supply — is simple, albeit difficult, Miller said. Cities must eliminate zoning restrictions and the state must build more infrastructure to unlock latent residential lots.

“We know what needs to be done, we just need to have the political wherewithal at every level to do it,” Miller said.

But, over the course of their conversations with the Deseret News, Miller, Burns and Moss each said separately that this is the essential quality that already makes Utah special.

This “Utah Way,” as Miller called it, where elected officials reaching across branches of government are able to sit down with higher education, entrepreneurs and community leaders “to create solutions for the citizens of the state,” is the state’s “remarkable competitive advantage,” Burns said.

And it’s the best hope, Moss believes, for economic development in what has been called the “next industrial revolution.”

If Utahns can be more intentional in cultivating this spirit of collaborative industry — even as it experiences record growth — Moss is confident it can come out of the current technological upheaval as strong as ever.

“We shouldn’t shy away from why Utah is unique,” Moss said. “We do things differently here. We really, genuinely want to work together.”