Oracle cancels $7 billion AI lease with Tencent: Overseas chip rentals can't escape U.S. pressure

Beating AI News Flash: Oracle, under pressure from the Trump administration, has canceled an AI computing power lease contract with Tencent worth approximately $7 billion. This was originally Tencent's largest overseas computing power lease, planned to last 5 years, providing up to approximately 100,000 advanced AI chips through multiple data centers in Southeast Asia.

The reason Tencent sought to lease chips overseas is that the United States restricts exports of advanced AI chips to China, but Chinese companies can still remotely lease computing power deployed overseas. This pathway is currently not comprehensively banned, yet U.S. officials directly approached Oracle and raised concerns about the deal.

Just the day before, Nvidia was also reported to have asked overseas cloud service providers to allocate at least 51% of their services to non-Chinese customers, which is currently only non-mandatory guidance.

Both matters point to the same shift: the United States is tightening the channels through which Chinese AI companies obtain overseas computing power, and restrictions have extended from chip exports to overseas leasing transactions.