Argentina is making a bold move to position itself as a regional innovation hub by partnering with OpenAI and energy-infrastructure firm Sur Energy to build a massive AI data-center project in Patagonia. The project is expected to require an investment of up to US$25 billion and a computing capacity of up to 500 megawatts, making it one of the largest technology-and-energy infrastructure undertakings in Argentina’s history.
The announcement comes as Argentina seeks to leverage its strengths—ample energy resources (including renewables), favourable climate for cooling large data centres, and a growing pool of skilled developers—to attract global investment in AI. A joint-government push aims to turn the country into a tech-anchor for Latin America. Experts believe that the project could catalyse both foreign capital inflows and a domestic innovation ecosystem around AI infrastructure.
However, the initiative faces significant challenges. Argentina’s macro-economic environment has had turbulence, and the country currently lacks many large-scale data-centre facilities and associated high-performance infrastructure. Ensuring that the promised investment, energy supply, regulatory stability and talent pipeline all come together will be critical to whether the project realises its potential.
If successful, the data centre project could mark a strategic shift: instead of being solely a consumer or outsourcing destination, Argentina might host core compute infrastructure of global AI systems. That shift could amplify its role in global tech value chains—but it will depend on execution, sustainability (especially energy/renewables) and how well local talent and ecosystems are scaled up to match the promise
