China's Tencent has signed a multiyear agreement with Oracle to gain access to high performance artificial intelligence hardware. The contract is valued at approximately $7 billion over five years for the use of 100,000 advanced chips hosted across Oracle Asia data centers. Tencent will pay about 30% of the total cost upfront to secure the equipment, which is currently unavailable for use within China.

The lease enables Tencent to accelerate its machine learning capabilities by bypassing domestic supply constraints and regulatory restrictions. By leveraging Oracle's cloud infrastructure in Asia, the company can expand its computational power to train larger models and advance its broader AI strategy.