Tencent Leases 100,000 AI Chips From Oracle to Accelerate Development

China’s Tencent has reportedly struck a deal to lease 100,000 artificial intelligence chips from US cloud services provider Oracle, seeking to accelerate the development of its AI capabilities.

The agreement is described as Tencent’s largest overseas leasing deal to date. It marks a major push to secure computing resources as the company works to keep pace with rivals in the fast-moving technology sector.

Access to AI chips provides the computing capacity needed to develop and run artificial intelligence systems. Leasing that capacity from a cloud provider offers an alternative to building and equipping company-owned infrastructure.

The reported deal places Oracle in a supporting role in Tencent’s AI expansion. The supplied details did not specify the agreement’s value, duration or the type of chips involved.