Kevin O’Leary says fear of China’s rise will be one of the biggest forces uniting the United States, Canada and Mexico.

In an interview clip he posted to his X and Instagram, the Canadian venture capitalist and “Shark Tank” investor said there’s only one thing that would drive economic integration in North America: fear of China.

He said in Sunday’s video that the fear that China would beat the United States in artificial intelligence, technology, warfare and energy generation would drive the United States, Canada and Mexico to collaborate.

“As the race for AI, energy and critical infrastructure accelerates, economic reality will outweigh political disagreements because the United States, Canada and Mexico are stronger when they work together,” O’Leary said in the post’s X title.

“Canada has the energy and critical minerals, the United States has the scale and innovation, and Mexico plays a vital role in the North American economy,” he added in the video. “In the long term, cooperation is not just good policy, it is an economic necessity.”

O’Leary is far from the only big business name speaking out about the competition the United States faces from China.

In a recent interview with The Economist, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that China already produces much more electricity than the United States and that, if it had enough computing power, it could become the world leader in artificial intelligence.

OpenAI and Anthropic, the two leading American AI labs, have warned that Chinese AI labs are closing the gap between their LLM capabilities. Moonshot AI’s latest Kimi K3 model was praised for performing tasks with cutting-edge capabilities.

And auto executives, including Ford CEO Jim Farley, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, have repeatedly talked about Chinese automakers’ prowess in building electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, North America is more fragmented than ever, and President Donald Trump imposed another round of tariffs (this time 50%) on some goods from Canada in July.

O’Leary’s comments come amid his intense push for more data centers. His venture capital firm, O’Leary Ventures, is developing massive data centers in Utah and Canada despite local backlash.