OpenAI says it is only a possible buyer for Argentina's planned 500MW data center

What OpenAI actually said

As FourWeekMBA reported, citing the Financial Times, OpenAI has described its role in an Argentine data center plan in cautious terms. A company spokesperson told the FT that OpenAI is only a potential offtaker. An offtaker is a buyer that agrees to take a project's output, here computing capacity.

The spokesperson also said that any purchase would hinge on Sur Energy, the Argentine infrastructure company leading the project, actually developing the site. In other words, OpenAI has not committed to buying anything yet.

The plan has a public history. In October 2025, President Javier Milei announced a 500MW data center meant to serve OpenAI. FourWeekMBA's earlier coverage called it Stargate Argentina and described a letter of intent for up to 500MW, along with Milei's proposed 15% tax rate for large AI investments. A letter of intent signals interest but is not a binding purchase.

The FT reports that nothing new has come out about the project since then. Sur Energy told local media in August that the next move belonged to OpenAI. That leaves each side pointing at the other.

A very small starting base

MW stands for megawatts, a measure of how much electric power a facility can draw. It is the usual yardstick for data center size. By the FT's account, Argentina has less than 40MW of data center capacity, while neighboring Chile has 400MW.

On the newsletter's own arithmetic, Chile's figure is more than 10 times Argentina's. A single 500MW project would therefore dwarf everything the country has built so far. That is part of why Milei is pitching Patagonia's land and energy to AI developers.

It also explains why the word "potential" carries so much weight. A project this large, in a country with so little existing capacity, would be built mostly from scratch.

Putting computers next to stranded gas

The FT visited Los Toldos, in Neuquén province, where a 12MW data center sits on the Patagonian steppe. It runs on gas that comes up as a byproduct of nearby shale oil drilling and would otherwise be flared, which means burned off as waste. Its operator, Unblock Energy, is planning a facility of several hundred MW.

Unblock's founder, Tomás Ocampo, said interest from American investors and customers jumped after Tuesday's midterm elections. He also argued that for Argentina, "Argentina makes a lot of sense" as a place to put data centers. The FT does not name the investors or clients, and gives no timeline for the larger facility.

Unblock estimates that drillers at the Vaca Muerta shale field waste about 600MW of potential electricity generation through flaring. It also says gas worth up to 3GW is left in the ground because there is not enough demand. These are the company's own estimates, not independent measurements.

The FT adds that almost 6GW of renewable projects are waiting for approval or are held back by limits on what the grid can carry. Against under 40MW of built data centers, the country appears to have far more unused energy than computing capacity.

Rules, rivals and critics

Milei's incentive regime for data centers has passed the lower house of Congress and is waiting for Senate backing. Separately, the government said in September that new large projects in any industry must provide infrastructure for 80 per cent of their electricity. The aim is to avoid overloading the existing grid.

Other sites are already competing for attention. Pampa Energy said in October that it had 800MW of capacity available in Neuquén for a data center. Polish company Green Capital has announced a $3bn data center in Chubut province.

Opinions on the pitch differ. Raimundo Diaz of Vistra Global Solutions told the FT that Argentina has few restrictions and could allow large data centers to be set up quickly. Environmental activist Oscar Soria, also quoted by the FT, argues the benefits offered to developers are excessive.

What is still unknown

OpenAI did not say whether it will buy capacity from the project. The FT reports no progress on the 500MW site since the announcement, and nothing in the reporting says whether the Senate will pass the incentive regime or whether any project will go ahead.

Still, the exchange is informative. Announcing a data center is not the same as having a buyer, a builder and power lined up. Lenders and developers generally want a committed buyer before money moves, so OpenAI's hedged wording suggests the project is earlier-stage than the headline number implied.

The newsletter's broader point holds as well: the limit on AI growth is increasingly electricity, not only chips or software. Argentina's pitch rests on a surplus of stranded energy. Whether that turns into working data centers depends on decisions that have not yet been made.