[News] Tencent Reportedly Signs $7B Deal to Lease 100,000 AI Chips From Oracle in Southeast Asia

Tencent is turning to overseas cloud infrastructure to secure access to advanced AI computing capacity unavailable in China. According to Reuters, citing Financial Times, Tencent has reportedly signed its largest overseas leasing deal with U.S. cloud provider Oracle, gaining access to about 100,000 advanced AI chips. The five-year agreement spans multiple Oracle data centers in Southeast Asia and is estimated to be worth about $7 billion, with roughly 30% paid upfront.

While Chinese technology companies are restricted from directly purchasing advanced AI chips, U.S. rules do not currently prohibit them from leasing computing capacity overseas, giving them access to advanced NVIDIA chips that are generally unavailable in China, Investing.com notes.

The deal comes as Tencent ramps up its AI infrastructure spending. According to the company, Q2 capital expenditure jumped 176% YoY to RMB 52.8 billion, while free cash flow turned negative at RMB 13.8 billion amid large AI-related prepayments.

Meanwhile, Tencent is working to strengthen its AI models and products as it competes with other leading Chinese AI developers. The company has also been expanding AI integration across products including WeChat, according to Investing.com. The report adds that Tencent’s latest Hunyuan models have shown substantial improvements in recent months, narrowing the gap with leading domestic models from companies including DeepSeek and Alibaba.

Chinese Tech Firms Turn Overseas for AI Compute

Tencent is not alone in seeking advanced AI compute through overseas data centers. According to Tom’s Hardware, citing Financial Times, ByteDance’s Singapore-based subsidiary Spring gained access to 2,304 NVIDIA B200 GPUs through UK cloud provider Nscale’s data center in Norway, allowing it to tap advanced AI computing resources outside China.

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(Photo credit: Tencent)