Oracle reportedly cancels $7B Tencent AI chip lease after US pressure
The five-year deal would have provided access to about 100,000 advanced chips in Southeast Asia; none of the companies has confirmed the cancellation.
Oracle has canceled an estimated $7 billion chip-leasing agreement with Tencent after pressure from the US government, according to the Financial Times. The reported five-year deal would have given Tencent access to about 100,000 advanced AI chips across Oracle data centers in Southeast Asia.
Reuters could not independently verify the report. Oracle, Tencent and the White House did not respond to its requests for comment, so the cancellation remains based on the Financial Times’ account citing people familiar with the matter.
The Financial Times says US officials approached Oracle with concerns about the arrangement. Tencent also reportedly received visits from senior officials in Guangdong who urged the company to support domestic Chinese chipmakers. The original lease was designed to provide computing hardware that Tencent could not readily obtain in China because of restrictions imposed by Washington and Beijing.
The deal matters beyond the two companies. Renting capacity from overseas cloud providers has been a legal route for Chinese AI groups to use advanced accelerators without importing them. If US officials are now discouraging individual contracts even where current rules permit them, other overseas training arrangements could face greater political risk. The episode also shows Chinese companies being squeezed simultaneously by US security policy and Beijing’s push for domestic chips.
Oracle
Tencent
