Tencent has signed its largest reported overseas lease deal with Oracle to access about 100,000 advanced AI chips unavailable in China, according to people familiar with the matter.

The reported deal would use a gap in the US export controls. Those rules have barred Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips from being sold into China, but they have mainly focused on physical shipments rather than clearly defined limits on remote cloud access.

Tencent has unveiled Hunyuan as its foundation model and also offers it through Tencent Cloud, indicating that access to AI computing power supports both its model development and cloud business.

For Oracle, the reported commitment would align with its broader AI cloud expansion and could draw more scrutiny in Washington, where lawmakers are seeking to close a cloud-access loophole for restricted AI computing power.

🔗 Source: Reuters

Recent Tencent developments