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

Tencent, the Chinese technology giant, has entered into a significant overseas lease agreement with US cloud provider Oracle to access around 100,000 advanced AI chips, according to the Financial Times. This deal, reported on the 30th of September, is the company's largest to date and would have provided chips not currently available in China.

The agreement spans five years and is estimated to be worth approximately $7 billion, with an initial payment of about 30%. However, Reuters was unable to independently verify the report and the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The deal underscores the growing computational requirements of Tencent's AI expansion. The company has been aggressively investing in the development and deployment of large language models. Recently, Tencent unveiled a preview version of its new AI image-generation model, which offers text-to-image and image-to-image functionalities, among other features.

The Chinese market is currently witnessing a fierce competition to secure AI chips as US export restrictions tighten and Beijing encourages the development of homegrown alternatives to US technology providers.