Tencent, Oracle Sign $7B Lease for 100,000 Advanced AI Chips in Southeast Asian Data Centers

Tencent has signed its largest overseas leasing agreement with Oracle, securing access to around 100,000 advanced AI chips across multiple Oracle data centers in Southeast Asia, according to the Financial Times. The deal is valued at approximately $7 billion, with an initial payment of about 30%. Neither Tencent nor Oracle responded to requests for comment.

People familiar with the matter said Tencent agreed to the five-year lease in 2026, covering several Oracle data centers in Southeast Asia. The computing capacity is planned to support Tencent's development of AI models and agent tools. ByteDance and Alibaba remain the largest customers of Southeast Asian data centers, sources said. Such leasing arrangements are permitted under U.S. rules and may provide access to advanced chips that Nvidia cannot supply in China. Chinese tech giants and frontier AI labs are using such resources for model training and other tasks.

Company data shows Tencent's capital expenditure in the second quarter of 2026 surged 176% year-over-year to 53 billion yuan, allocated for AI infrastructure and prepayments for computing resources. Tencent has also been hiring more top talent and restructuring its infrastructure and data departments.