Central Puerto, one of Argentina’s largest power producers, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to power a portion of OpenAI’s planned Stargate Argentina project.

According to reporting from Bloomberg, the power producer would likely supply power to the $25 billion project via a hydroelectric dam. According to the company’s website, it operates 14 power plants across the country with a total installed capacity of 6.7GW.

It operates a number of hydroelectric plants, including the 1.44GW Piedra del Águila Hydroelectric Plant on the Limay River in northwestern Patagonia, Argentina. It is unclear what plant would serve the data center.

The Stargate Argentina initiative was announced by the Argentine government earlier this month. As part of the announcement, renewable energy firm Sur Energy inked a Letter of Intent to supply power to the large-scale data center, which is expected to have a capacity of up to 500MW at full build-out.

Scant details about the project are available, aside from the fact that it would be located somewhere in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region. Reports suggest construction would begin next year, with the first 100MW phase launching in 2027.

Local press have reported that the data center will be completed via a joint venture between Sur Energy and an unnamed ‘leading cloud infrastructure developer,’ supported by a power purchase agreement from OpenAI.

The deal is structured under the RIGI framework, an Argentinian government-backed incentive scheme to attract large-scale investment into the country.

"We are proud to announce plans to launch Stargate Argentina, an exciting new infrastructure project in partnership with one of the country's leading energy companies, Sur Energy," said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, following the initial announcement.

Stargate was launched by OpenAI in January, in partnership with SoftBank, Oracle, and Abu Dhabi's MGX. The partners claimed at the time that the project would involve the investment of up to $500bn in digital infrastructure in the US over the next four years to serve OpenAI's compute needs.

An initial project was announced in Texas, which reached operational status last month. Further projects in the US have subsequently been announced.

Since then, OpenAI has announced plans for Stargate data centers in the UK, Norway, and South Korea with multiple partners, with reports of more in the works in Canada and India.