Tencent signs reported $7 billion deal to lease 100,000 AI chips from Oracle, enabling large-scale domestic compute access despite US export restrictions.

Tencent has struck what it describes as its biggest overseas lease agreement to date with U.S. cloud provider Oracle, securing rights to roughly 100,000 cutting-edge AI chips unavailable within China. According to the Financial Times, the five-year agreement is valued at approximately $7 billion, with roughly 30% of that amount due upfront. The lease covers multiple Oracle data centers located across Southeast Asia.

Neither Oracle nor Tencent responded to requests for comment. The arrangement comes as Tencent, the Shenzhen-based company that owns WeChat, has been aggressively pursuing expansion of its artificial intelligence capabilities and investing heavily in building and deploying large language models.

The deal underscores the broader competitive dynamics shaping China's tech sector. Chinese technology companies have been moving to secure reliable supplies of advanced AI chips amid escalating U.S. export controls on semiconductor technology. Simultaneously, Beijing has been promoting domestically developed alternatives to U.S. technology providers as part of its broader effort to reduce reliance on American suppliers.