Oracle and Tencent have signed a five‑year lease for roughly 100,000 AI chips that cannot be bought in China. The lease runs across several Oracle data centers in Southeast Asia and is valued at about $7 billion. According to the Financial Times, the cost works out to around $1.60 per chip per hour, with roughly 30 % of the price paid upfront.
How the price compares
The estimated $1.60 per chip‑hour is about 43 % lower than the $2.80 per GPU‑hour that Nvidia charges for its H100 chips on a one‑year contract, according to research firm SemiAnalysis. It is also roughly 48 % cheaper than the $3.09 per GPU‑hour Nvidia B200 price on a three‑year contract, based on a 2025 filing from Japanese data‑center operator Datasection.
Why it matters
For companies that need large AI workloads, the Oracle‑Tencent lease offers a much cheaper way to run models than renting Nvidia hardware at current market rates. This could let Tencent and its partners keep AI costs down while the price of compute elsewhere keeps climbing. It remains unclear how many other firms will secure similar offshore leases under the same U.S. rules.
