Oracle cancels a $7bn AI chip leasing deal with Tencent under US pressure, FT reports
The five-year lease would have given Tencent access to as many as 100,000 advanced AI chips in South-East Asian data centres; the FT cites two people familiar with the matter.
Why it matters
The cancellation shows Washington's pressure reaching chip leasing, a route Chinese firms have used to rent advanced AI compute outside China. It follows the FT's report a day earlier that Nvidia told cloud clients to sell at least 51% of their capacity to non-Chinese companies. Beijing had also scrutinised the deal and asked Tencent to seek domestic chips. ByteDance and Alibaba still hold large leasing deals with US providers, and Oracle supplies ByteDance from several data centres in Malaysia, so watch whether those face the same pressure.
Key facts
- $7bn, five-year lease
- Up to 100,000 advanced AI chips
- Data centres across South-East Asia
- Reported by the Financial Times, citing two people
- Beijing asked Tencent to seek domestic chips
- Oracle supplies ByteDance from data centres in Malaysia