Tencent Leases 100,000 AI Chips From Oracle in $7 Billion, Five-Year Deal, FT Reports

Tencent has signed a five-year lease worth about $7 billion for roughly 100,000 advanced AI chips in ORCL data centres in Southeast Asia, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the transaction. The WeChat owner will reportedly pay about 30% of the total upfront, and the FT described it as Tencent's largest overseas lease agreement. Neither Tencent nor Oracle has publicly confirmed the arrangement, and Reuters said it could not immediately verify the figures.

The structure reflects U.S. export controls. Chinese companies cannot buy the most advanced AI chips outright, but they can lease computing capacity outside China, and the deal gives Tencent access to hardware it cannot obtain at home. The chip model and the specific countries involved were not disclosed. Tencent is racing domestic rivals ByteDance and Alibaba for AI computing power, and ByteDance is already among Oracle's largest GPU customers in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Startup Fortune.

For Oracle, the reported deal adds a large customer outside the U.S. to its AI infrastructure business. Market reaction was muted: Investing.com showed Oracle down 0.36% at the prior close and Tencent's Hong Kong shares down 0.23%.

What to watch: any confirmation or detail from either company, whether U.S. officials respond to Chinese firms scaling up offshore leasing, and whether other Chinese technology groups follow with similar agreements.