Peter Thiel's Milei bromance pays off with $76mn Argentina shale stake

US technology billionaire Peter Thiel has taken a roughly 1% stake in Vista Energy, Argentina's leading shale oil producer, a regulatory filing showed, sending the company's shares sharply higher and deepening Thiel's financial and personal ties to President Javier Milei's government as it seeks foreign capital for the Vaca Muerta shale formation.

Thiel Macro LLC, an investment vehicle controlled by the PayPal and Palantir Technologies co-founder, held 1,189,792 American Depositary Shares of Vista as of June 30, worth about $76mn, according to a Form 13F filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on August 14. The stake equates to roughly 1% of the company led by Argentine chief executive Miguel Galuccio, and was first reported by Bloomberg.

News of the stake sent Vista's Nasdaq-listed shares up as much as 5.4% before the market open on August 17, CNBC reported.

Amazon remained Thiel Macro's largest disclosed holding, with a stake of about 495,000 shares worth roughly $118mn, while Vista was the fund's second-biggest position and its only holding outside the United States. The broader $418.7mn portfolio also included stakes in Vistra, American Electric Power, DTE Energy, FirstEnergy, CMS Energy and X-Energy, the filing showed, with all but one of the seven newly disclosed positions sitting in the energy or utility sector.

Vista, founded by Galuccio in 2017, has become Argentina's top crude oil exporter, pumping about 160,000 barrels of oil and gas equivalent per day, with roughly 70% of output sold abroad. The company's total production rose 32% year-on-year in the second quarter to 156,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, driven by Vaca Muerta development and the consolidation of assets acquired from Norway's Equinor in May, Vista has said. Oil output climbed 33% to 135,000 barrels per day, while lifting costs fell 4% to $4.50 a barrel. Oil exports rose 54% to 8.6mn barrels in the quarter, representing 72% of Vista's total oil sales volume.

Vista became Argentina's largest crude exporter after acquiring Malaysian group Petronas' local assets in April 2025, and has since invested more than $6.5bn in the country, according to Reuters calculations. It holds a stake in the Vaca Muerta Oil Sur (VMOS) pipeline and port project, which is designed to expand Argentina's capacity to ship crude to export markets.

Thiel, a prominent early supporter of US President Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign, ranked 87th on Forbes' global billionaires list with an estimated fortune of $32bn, made his name as an early Facebook investor and general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, which has backed SpaceX, Stripe, Airbnb and OpenAI. He co-founded Palantir, the data-analytics company that initially received backing from In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the US Central Intelligence Agency, before going public in 2020.

The Vista purchase marks Thiel's first known direct investment in a Vaca Muerta company and fits a broader thesis in which he has argued Western capital neglected physical infrastructure and energy in favour of software. Thiel is also involved in General Matter, a company developing capacity to produce enriched uranium fuel for next-generation nuclear reactors that won a $900mn contract from the US Department of Energy this year, while Founders Fund has exposure to Crusoe, a company that uses gas from Vaca Muerta to power computing infrastructure.

Thiel's presence in Argentina predates the Vista stake and extends well beyond it, according to the New York Times, which reported in May that he had moved his family to Buenos Aires into a $12mn mansion and enrolled his children in a local school. People familiar with his thinking told the newspaper the move reflects, in part, unease over a proposed California ballot measure that would tax billionaires' wealth, as well as Thiel's longstanding practice of maintaining residency options outside the United States — he already holds New Zealand citizenship and has applied for a Maltese passport — as a hedge against risks he has publicly flagged, including nuclear conflict and unchecked artificial intelligence. The NYT reported that Argentine officials had discussed the possibility of offering Thiel residency or citizenship, though a spokesman for Milei denied any such offer had been considered.

He has also built a political relationship with Milei's libertarian administration, seen as closely aligned on social and ideological issues. Thiel first met the Argentine president at the Casa Rosada in May 2024, when he was accompanied by Alec Oxenford, then Argentina's ambassador to Washington. Oxenford said afterwards that Thiel viewed Milei's ideas as "as relevant globally as they are for Argentina."

The two met again on April 23, alongside Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno, Thiel Capital portfolio manager Matt Danzeisen and Founders Fund partner Matias Van Thienen. Milei later said on streaming channel Neura that Thiel had asked him "how can this be sustained over time?", to which he replied that the durability of his economic overhaul depended on winning a "cultural battle." Milei said the pair also discussed a wealth tax, which he said they both regarded as "aberrant."

Thiel's contacts with Milei's inner circle have broadened since his arrival in the country in April, with sit-downs alongside Economy Minister Luis Caputo, Deregulation Minister Federico Sturzenegger and presidential adviser Santiago Caputo. Those meetings come as Milei presses ahead with a wide-ranging overhaul of Argentina's flagging economy, part of a drive to pull foreign money into natural-resource sectors such as oil, lithium and rare earths.

"He is an anarcho-capitalist who finds an anarcho-capitalist who is bringing things to reality and who is making it work," Milei said of Thiel.

Thiel is due to be the keynote speaker at the "Winds of Change" forum on September 1-2 at a hotel in Buenos Aires' Retiro district, an event expected to draw several of Milei's cabinet ministers.

Milei's government last year introduced the RIGI incentive scheme for large investments and more recently presented a "Super RIGI" bill to Congress that would extend benefits to projects worth $1bn or more in sectors including artificial intelligence and data centres, lithium batteries, small nuclear reactors, biotechnology, semiconductors, hydrogen, liquefied natural gas and renewable energy.

Thiel is also a prominent Republican donor in the United States, having contributed $15mn to a political action committee that backed US Vice President JD Vance, a longtime associate and protegé, in his 2022 Senate campaign in Ohio.