Peter Thiel Relocates to Argentina, Buying Property and Cozying Up to Milei

Peter Thiel, the 58-year-old PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist, has made a striking move: he's temporarily relocated his family to Buenos Aires, enrolled his children in a local school, purchased a mansion in one of the city's most exclusive neighborhoods, and has been actively cultivating ties with President Javier Milei and his cabinet. The shift marks the latest in Thiel's long-running strategy of acquiring 'backup countries' — he obtained New Zealand citizenship in 2011 and applied for a Maltese passport in 2022 — and appears driven by a mix of ideological affinity, apocalyptic risk calculus, and very concrete financial concerns.

The financial trigger is specific: California political groups began advancing a ballot initiative that would impose a 5 percent tax on billionaires' assets, and by late last year Thiel was actively exploring an exit from the state. Argentina's combination of Milei's libertarian deregulation agenda, low taxes, and geographic distance from northern-hemisphere conflicts made it an attractive destination. The Argentine government has reportedly explored offering Thiel permanent residency or even citizenship — though Milei's spokesman denied this — and is working to establish a formal 'golden passport' program for large investors. Cabinet chief Manuel Adorni publicly declared that billionaires fleeing heavily regulated, high-tax countries are 'welcome in the Argentine republic, the new land of freedom.'

Thiel and Milei have developed what both describe as a genuine ideological kinship. The two first met in 2024 through a meeting brokered by Alec Oxenford, Argentina's ambassador to the U.S. and a former recipient of Founders Fund investment. After their April meeting at the Casa Rosada, Milei described the encounter as 'an anarcho-capitalist who met another anarcho-capitalist who is bringing things to life.' Thiel has since dined at the home of deregulation minister Federico Sturzenegger and met separately with economy minister Luis Caputo. At a candlelit dinner at his Buenos Aires mansion, Thiel hosted economists and intellectuals before steering the conversation toward the Antichrist — a recurring topic in his lectures, where he has warned about a potential totalitarian world government.

Beyond ideology, Thiel seems to be genuinely enjoying Argentine life. He attended a River Plate vs. Boca Juniors derby, traveled to the Patagonian resort of Bariloche, and placed third at a Buenos Aires chess club tournament in the Almagro neighborhood — where he stayed afterward to play with a child competitor. His only confirmed investments so far are personal real estate: the Buenos Aires mansion and a plot of land near Punta del Este in neighboring Uruguay, which some observers have speculated could include a bunker for nuclear apocalypse scenarios. Fellow tech entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, a Thiel associate who has built a ranch in Mendoza as a potential WWIII shelter, has argued Argentina would be entirely unaffected if the northern hemisphere were destroyed in nuclear war.

The reaction inside Argentina has been sharply polarized. Milei supporters treat Thiel's arrival as validation of the president's economic transformation, while critics see it as emblematic of the country being handed over to unbridled global capitalism. Opposition politician Elisa Carrió called his settling in Argentina 'even worse' than his broader activities, and conspiracy theories have circulated about Thiel using Palantir — the big-data firm he co-founded — to harvest Argentine personal data or interfere in next year's presidential elections.