China’s Tencent leases 100,000 chips from Oracle to accelerate AI push, FT reports

Tencent, the major tech company, has entered into a significant agreement with US cloud provider Oracle to acquire over 100,000 advanced AI chips for an extended period. This lease deal, disclosed by the Financial Times, involves multiple Oracle data centers in Southeast Asia and is set to span five years. According to people familiar with the arrangement, reported by the FT, the deal is valued at approximately US$7 billion, with an initial payment accounting for around 30% of the total.

However, Reuters has yet to independently verify the report, and both Oracle and Tencent have not yet responded to requests for comment.

This strategic partnership underscores Tencent's growing demand for AI computing resources as it accelerates its investments in developing and deploying large language models. Recently, Tencent unveiled a preview version of its new AI image-generation model tailored for professional creators, offering a range of innovative features including text-to-image and image-to-image generation.

The company's pursuit of advanced AI capabilities is driven by the tightening US export controls on technology and Beijing's encouragement of domestic alternatives to US technology providers.