Israel's AI opening in Latin America is no longer just a Jerusalem ceremony. The live test is now in Buenos Aires, where lawmakers from across the region have started turning the Isaac Accords into a broader political lane.
The newer story is not the handshake from April. It is what happened in Buenos Aires between June 28 and 30, when the Israel Allies Foundation and American Friends of Isaac Accords gathered more than 20 lawmakers from 14 countries for a Latin America Chairmen's Conference and left with a resolution backing an expanded version of the Accords. If you want to know whether Israel can turn its technology sector into diplomatic leverage in Latin America, start there.
On April 19, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Argentine President Javier Milei stood together in Jerusalem and launched the Isaac Accords, a framework modeled on the Abraham Accords but pointed south instead of east. According to reporting from The Times of Israel and Israeli government notices, Argentina signed a counterterrorism memorandum, opened a $150 million credit line for Israeli businesses operating in the country, and agreed to direct El Al service between Tel Aviv and Buenos Aires beginning in November, the carrier's first regular route to South America. Inside that package sat the part that gives the story its startup edge: an AI cooperation memorandum between Israel's National AI Directorate and Argentina's National Secretariat for Innovation, Science and Technology.
That memorandum is not just polite diplomatic language. Israel's government press office said the two sides agreed to cooperate on supercomputing infrastructure, AI deployment in civilian sectors, and joint research and training programs. For Milei, who has spent the past year trying to present Argentina as Latin America's most AI-friendly government, it gives legal and diplomatic scaffolding to a much larger bet. He has proposed a new legal category for non-human corporations, entities run by AI agents rather than traditional boards, and wrote in the Financial Times that he wants Argentina to compete for the next wave of artificial intelligence investment.
Look, that is a strange and risky idea. Yuval Noah Harari attacked it in the Financial Times, warning that AI-run corporations could hold assets, hire staff and litigate without a human decision maker clearly on the hook. Milei answered through an official statement on June 19, arguing that his plan would not trigger a Terminator-style disaster but would create a legal frame for AI companies that could be dissolved or have assets seized. You do not have to buy the whole argument to see why Israel is interested. Argentina is offering a government willing to move fast, and Israeli AI companies need markets that are not locked inside the U.S.-China fight or slowed by European rulemaking.
Milei is not stopping at Argentina's borders. Jewish Insider and JNS reported that the Buenos Aires conference named Brazil, Colombia and Chile as likely next targets for the Accords, with El Salvador, Ecuador and Paraguay also in the mix. That list is uneven. Colombia's current government has been openly hostile to Israel, while El Salvador and Paraguay are much easier political terrain. But the point is clear enough: Israel is trying to turn bilateral warmth with Milei into a regional network.
Ecuador shows why the timing works. President Daniel Noboa has been fighting a brutal cartel war, and AFP reported in 2025 that he asked Israel and the UAE for intelligence support. That is security cooperation, not an AI sales contract, but the overlap matters. Governments under pressure from organized crime, weak infrastructure and uneven U.S. attention are looking for technical partners who can bring cyber tools, surveillance systems, automation and training without the same political baggage as Beijing or Brussels.
Israeli industry knows the pitch. A recent Ynetnews analysis described Latin America as a market looking for automation, cybersecurity, supply chain and robotics tools now, not in some distant technology cycle. It pointed to Mexico's rise as a major global economy and to nearshoring that is pulling manufacturing into Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama and the Dominican Republic. None of that requires an accord. But an accord gives Israeli firms a door, a ministerial contact, and a story to tell when they land in Buenos Aires, Quito or San Salvador.
Back home, the pressure to find that door is real. Former prime minister Naftali Bennett warned this week that Israel risks falling behind in AI infrastructure, treating the technology less like software and more like electricity. His point was blunt: Israel cannot depend on outside powers for every layer of the stack, from chips to models to energy. Frankly, that anxiety sits behind the Latin America push too. Israel wants sovereign AI capacity at home, and it wants friendly, lower-friction markets abroad while the largest markets get harder to enter.
None of this has produced a single Israeli startup with a signed Latin American AI contract and a headline valuation. What exists so far is government scaffolding: an MOU, a credit line, a conference resolution and a list of countries waiting around the edge of the deal. That is not enough to declare victory. It is enough to make the next six months worth watching.
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