Miles Brundage publicly criticized the Tencent-Oracle chip lease arrangement
Following·New·first covered 30 Sep 2026·3 sources
Tencent Leases 100,000 Oracle Chips in $7B Deal Outside China
The gist
The Oracle lease demonstrates a pathway for Chinese companies to access large-scale advanced AI compute through remote arrangements that fall outside the scope of US export control restrictions. US export controls on chip destinations have not closed off remote access by Chinese firms to chips located in third countries.
The full picture
Tencent has entered a five-year lease with Oracle for approximately 100,000 advanced AI chips valued at roughly $7 billion, with the chips housed across Oracle data centers in Southeast Asia and physically unavailable inside China. The arrangement is permitted under US export controls because those rules govern where chips are physically shipped, not who remotely accesses computing power from abroad. Separately, Beijing is considering allowing select Chinese companies to buy advanced Nvidia chips directly, as Chinese AI firms are deploying products faster than they can source chips.
How it developed
Reports emerge that Beijing is considering allowing select Chinese companies to buy advanced Nvidia chips
Sources
Miles Brundage Twitter
Rohan Paul Twitter
Semafor Technology
- 🟡 The hand of AI
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