Protesters dressed as Gandalf the Grey — grey robes, pointed hats, white beards — gathered outside Peter Thiel’s mansion in the Palermo Chico neighborhood of Buenos Aires around Aug. 18. That was roughly a day after his hedge fund’s roughly $76 million stake in Vista Energy, an Argentine oil and gas producer, became public knowledge. The group carried a banner that read “You shall not pass.”
The group, which called itself “Ciudadan@s Gandalf” — the “@” standing in for the masculine and feminine Spanish endings, a gender-neutral convention that renders the name as “Citizens Gandalf” — was objecting to two things: that Vista Energy stake and his company Palantir Technologies’ government surveillance contracts. The costumes doubled as a pointed joke — Palantir takes its name from the “palantíri,” the all-seeing stones from J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels.
Key facts
- Who: Protesters dressed as Gandalf the Grey, calling themselves “Ciudadan@s Gandalf”
- Where: Outside Thiel’s mansion in the Palermo Chico neighborhood of Buenos Aires
- When: Around Aug. 18, 2026
- Why: Objecting to Thiel’s roughly $76 million stake in Vista Energy and Palantir’s government surveillance contracts
- The stake: 1,189,792 American Depositary Shares of Vista Energy — about 1% of the company, worth about $76 million
- How it surfaced: Disclosed in a Form 13F that Thiel’s hedge fund, Thiel Macro, filed with the SEC on Aug. 14
- Thiel’s net worth: About $27.5 billion, as of December 2025
Thiel’s move to Argentina
Thiel co-founded PayPal and led it as CEO, made the first outside investment in Facebook, co-founded and chairs Palantir, and is a partner at the venture firm Founders Fund, which has backed SpaceX and Airbnb. Over the past several months, he has reportedly spent time in Argentina.
According to The Washington Times, Thiel bought a $12 million mansion in Buenos Aires and temporarily relocated his family there starting around April 2026; his two children were enrolled in local schools, and he has met with President Javier Milei and other Argentine officials. The New York Times has reported that part of his motivation for the move was concern over a proposed one-time 5% California wealth tax on assets over $1 billion — a tax that could reportedly cost him an estimated $1.4 billion.
A withdrawal, and the organizers’ explanation
Thiel had been scheduled to appear at the “Vientos de Cambio” (“Winds of Change”) libertarian summit in Buenos Aires on Sept. 1-2, organized by the Fundación Libertad y Progreso, for a public conversation with Chilean commentator Axel Kaiser; Milei was set to close out the event. Thiel has since withdrawn. Several outlets noted the withdrawal came just days after the Gandalf protest outside his home. The foundation that organized the summit, however, said the decision was for “scheduling and logistical reasons completely unrelated” to the protest — no other explanation has surfaced, and Thiel himself has not been quoted publicly addressing either the protest or his withdrawal.
The summit is still set to go ahead Sept. 1-2 — without him. It hasn’t been reported whether Milei’s plan to close out the event has changed.
A big bet on energy
The Vista Energy stake behind the protest surfaced in a required quarterly disclosure: Thiel’s hedge fund, Thiel Macro, filed a Form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 14, covering the quarter that ended June 30 — the routine filing that tells investors what public stocks a large fund owns. The filing shows Thiel Macro holding 1,189,792 American Depositary Shares — shares of the Argentine company that trade on U.S. exchanges — of Vista Energy, roughly 1% of the company’s outstanding stock and worth about $76 million, a small slice of Thiel’s own fortune, estimated at $27.5 billion as of December 2025. Vista Energy operates in Vaca Muerta, an Argentine shale oil and gas formation. Vista Energy’s stock rose about 4% after the stake became public around Aug. 17 — the day before the Gandalf protest.
The Vista Energy position was one of eight the filing disclosed, together worth $418.67 million:
- Amazon — 495,000 shares worth just under $118 million, about 28% of the portfolio, and the fund’s only technology stock
- Vistra — $59.1 million, 14.1% of the portfolio
- American Electric Power — $42.2 million, 10.1% of the portfolio
- Vista Energy — about $76 million, roughly 1% of the company
- Four smaller power/energy stakes — DTE Energy ($40.3 million, 9.6%), FirstEnergy ($39.9 million, 9.5%), CMS Energy ($39.6 million, 9.4%) and X-Energy ($3.7 million, 0.9%)
The rest, roughly 72% of the portfolio, sits in these power and utility companies alongside Vista Energy. 247 Wall St. and other financial outlets that reviewed the filing read it as a bet that the bottleneck holding back AI’s growth is the electricity needed to run data centers, not computer chips — the fund holds no chip stocks. It’s the first set of public holdings Thiel Macro has disclosed since reporting none at the end of 2025 or in the first quarter of 2026.