Tencent has reportedly signed a five-year deal with Oracle to access about 100,000 advanced AI chips. The agreement is valued at around 7 billion dollars, according to the Financial Times as reported by Reuters.

The chips would be hosted in Oracle data centres in Southeast Asia. They would not be shipped into China. About 30 percent of the amount is to be paid upfront, reports say.

The deal would be Tencent’s largest overseas leasing agreement with a US cloud provider. It highlights a key challenge for China’s AI industry. Demand for computing power is rising fast, while US export controls limit direct access to advanced chips.

Neither Oracle nor Tencent had publicly confirmed the agreement at the time of reporting. Tencent is developing its Hunyuan family of AI models. Access to computing infrastructure has become a strategic issue for major technology firms worldwide. Training large AI models needs huge computing clusters. Companies are racing to secure chip supply for the next wave of products. Oracle has been expanding its cloud business in Southeast Asia. For Tencent, the deal would add major capacity without moving hardware into China.