Javier Milei’s Argentina: A ‘new land of freedom’ for billionaires?
Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel made headlines when he decided to relocate with his family to Buenos Aires earlier this summer, purchasing a mansion in an exclusive neighborhood and meeting with President Javier Milei and senior government officials.
This is exactly the plan, it turns out — Argentina wants more people like him. The country has been preparing for the last year to launch a full citizenship-by-investment scheme. In July 2025, Decree 524/2025 established an Investment Citizenship Programs Agency within its Ministry of Economy that would allow, for the first time, foreign investors to apply for citizenship without needing to reside in Argentina first. The exact parameters are still being worked out, with the Financial Times reporting that wealthy foreigners may be able to obtain Argentine citizenship in exchange for a non-refundable donation of about $500,000 or buying $1 million in zero-coupon government bonds, citing people familiar with the government’s plans.
The sheer scale of the plan is what sets it apart from anything the citizenship-by-investment industry has tried before, according to “This is a country of over 40 million people, and the opportunities, the business opportunities that are available in Argentina are endless,” he told Fortune. The largest countries to previously offer citizenship for investment—Montenegro and Malta—are small nations by comparison, he noted.
Katz pointed to several selling points for wealthy investors. The country sits on Vaca Muerta, one of the world’s largest shale oil and gas formations, which has been geologically compared to the Eagle Ford shale in South Texas by experts, alongside major lithium, gold, silver, soy, corn, beef, and wheat industries. He cited the roughly $22 billion a year in trade that Argentina has with the European Union as further evidence of the scale of opportunity.
The push builds on reporting the government has been developing to court prominent wealthy figures to what a former official described as a “new land of freedom” for billionaires.
“I think it will be a serious contender and player in the wealth migration, investment migration space,” Dominic Volek, who advises ultra-high-net-worth families on residence and citizenship planning at Henley & Partners, told Fortune.
The appetite for such an option isn’t hypothetical. Wealthy families in the U.S. are actively searching for safe havens. A proprietary survey of 1,800 Americans commissioned by Katz’s firm found that 61% would consider moving out of the United States within the next five years—a number Katz called “incredibly shocking.” [Continue reading…]
Palantir chairman and hedge fund owner Peter Thiel bought a 1% stake in one of the biggest companies operating in the Vaca Muerta shale formation in Argentina in the latest evidence of the play’s prospects as the world’s second-largest shale oil and gas deposit amid a global crunch.
Thiel bought the stake in Vista in the form of American depositary shares worth $76 million, according to a security filing cited by Reuters. The purchase came four months after a meeting between the venture capitalist and Argentina’s president, Javier Milei. At the meeting, per Milei, the two discussed economic policies and the Argentinian president’s opposition to wealth taxes.
The Argentinian president is also eyeing data centers as a source of government revenue, exploiting the vast – and flat – open spaces available in Patagonia, which also has a cool climate, reducing potential data center operators’ cooling demand. Readily available oil and gas, especially the latter, would be essential for attracting data center investors to the chronically sick economy of Argentina. [Continue reading…]