A remote corner of South America, long celebrated for its glaciers, temperate rainforests, and extraordinary biodiversity, is being repositioned as the future home of industrial-scale artificial intelligence infrastructure. Patagonia, Argentina’s storied southern frontier, is now at the center of a data center buildout backed by OpenAI, shaped by a little-scrutinized entrepreneur named Emiliano Kargieman, and enabled by a Milei administration that has systematically dismantled regulatory barriers for foreign technology firms.

The Stargate Argentina Announcement

In October 2025, OpenAI published a statement announcing that Argentina had become a candidate for the first Stargate project in Latin America. The initiative centers on a partnership between OpenAI and Sur Energy, an infrastructure and energy developer led by Emiliano Kargieman. The two organizations signed a Letter of Intent to explore a large-scale data center project in Argentina. According to OpenAI’s announcement, Sur Energy would serve as the energy and infrastructure developer, leading the formation of a broader consortium, while OpenAI would act as an offtaker for the facility’s computing capacity.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman framed the announcement in expansive terms, stating that

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