Global Perspectives
This editorial draws on a conversation with Alexander Ditzend
Alexander Ditzend
Presidente de la Sociedad Argentina de Inteligencia Artificial
Alexander Ditzend is a consultant specialized in Artificial Intelligence applied to business. In recent years, he has supported various organizations in developing AI-based products and services, from providing guidance on strategic management to implementing solutions alongside technical teams. He directed the postgraduate program in Strategic Management of Artificial Intelligence and Business Automation Projects at UCEMA. He currently serves as President of the Argentine Society of Artificial Intelligence, CTO at AIWorkify, and President of Macssen.
Key Takeaways
– How Milei’s “chainsaw plan” managed to achieve zero deficit for the first time in a century
– Entrepreneurial DNA fostering economic resilience and adaptability
– The road toward success: infrastructure, energy, language
Argentina is attempting something audaciously simple in 2025: to spend less than it earns. For a country that’s spent decades lurching between crises, achieving zero deficit for the first time in nearly a century represents the beginning of something completely new.
It all started with President Javier Milei’s “chainsaw plan”: ministries eliminated, spending slashed, inflation down from 300% to manageable levels. Markets stabilized. But the cuts weren’t surgical, and aggressive government rhetoric alienated voters. After losing the Buenos Aires provincial elections by 14 points in August, the tone shifted dramatically. By October’s midterm elections, Milei’s party won decisively, taking 41% of the vote.
The political drama, though, obscures the more interesting story that Argentina has to tell. Despite political chaos and regulatory obstacles, in recent years Argentina has produced 14 unicorns—companies valued over $1 billion. That’s one of the highest unicorn-per-capita ratios in Latin America. The paradox demands explanation: how does a country in constant crisis produce so much innovation?
The answer lies in what crisis creates. Constant instability has forged a generation of entrepreneurs resilient to rapid change. As Ditzend puts it: “Argentina has alternated between so many different situations so rapidly and drastically, while businesses had to keep operating and families had to keep eating, that this generated a legion of leaders, business owners, and entrepreneurs who are resilient to major changes in short timeframes. Which is exactly what artificial intelligence represents for industry. Argentina has inadvertently trained a generation of leaders who aren’t thrown off by novelty and who can reimagine their business model by next week if necessary.”
That adaptability is now driving Argentina’s AI ambitions. The country recently trained TANGO70B—the first large language model developed from scratch in the region. Chile is following with LATAM-GPT, another model trained on Spanish rather than English. The performance gain is modest—about 20%—but across trillions of interactions, that represents significant computational savings. Eventually, as Alexander told the Imminent team, “the Spanish-speaking world will have its own LLM trained entirely in Spanish.”
Argentina has inadvertently trained a generation of leaders who aren’t thrown off by novelty and who can reimagine their business model by next week if necessary
Beyond language models, AI labs are developing specialized applications for legal language, healthcare terminology, and other domains—not just nationally but potentially by province. In fact, in a region where Spanish is widely spoken and understood, the challenge isn’t language itself but phonation. In fact, a speech-to-text model trained on Buenos Aires accents might fail in Córdoba or Mendoza. For instance, the Inter-American Development Bank is funding projects to collect voice data from different provinces, ensuring models understand Argentina’s phonetic diversity.
Technical progress, however, requires infrastructure—and energy. That is why Argentina is not only betting on entrepreneurial resilience but also on nuclear energy to power AI data centers, leveraging decades of research. The plan is not merely domestic: Argentina intends to export reactors, as well. At the same time, it is capitalizing on Vaca Muerta, the massive petroleum deposit that could provide both energy and revenue.
What Argentina still lacks is the stability needed to unlock regulatory reform. As Alexander notes, the country’s labor laws paradoxically hurt workers by discouraging entrepreneurs from hiring at all. Many companies choose not to scale, simply to avoid the regulatory burdens that growth would trigger. The result is predictable: fewer exports, slower expansion, and a tech sector forced to look abroad for real markets.
In fact, at the moment, most Argentine startups refine their business model at home, then scale in Mexico, where regulatory conditions and market size make growth more feasible. From there, they often expand into Colombia and Peru. Argentina’s time zone makes this regional integration easier. Once established across the region, rather than the U.S., many companies turn to Spain, where shared language and cultural familiarity lower the barriers to entry. Linguistic affinity, again, proves to be an asset.
If labor reform materializes, Argentina’s tech sector could accelerate dramatically. The country has talent, entrepreneurial DNA, energy resources, and developing infrastructure. What it has consistently lacked is continuity—the ability to maintain a national project long enough for it to mature. Milei’s first year was always going to be painful. Argentines were asked to trust the process, but patience is thinning. If the government negotiates reforms by building coalitions, Argentina could sustain 5–6% annual growth for years. If ideological rigidity prevails, the political pendulum will swing back, and another administration will dismantle what’s been built.
The country is now debating topics once considered untouchable, and these conversations alone mark a transformation. The chainsaw cut through old structures. Now comes the tougher task: building something that can actually endure.