Oracleis spending "billions" of dollars on chips from Nvidia as it expands a cloud computing service targeting a new wave of artificial intelligence (AI) companies, Oracle founder and Chairman Larry Ellison said on Wednesday.

Alibaba Group and Chinese state-backed firms are weighing bids for a stake in Unisplendour, a cloud computing infrastructure firm, that could fetch as much as $7.7 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors on Tuesday said it had entered a strategic relationship with Amazon.com's cloud computing unit to help cars communicate with data centers.

Arm on Thursday said it was partnering with Microsoft to create tools that will help software developers transfer data from tiny sensor chips to Microsoft's cloud computing service.

Microsoft will offer a new service called Azure Orbital that connects satellites directly to its cloud computing network.

Nvidia's new A100 flagship GPU is powering a new family of Google cloud computing instances -- including one that provides access to 16 GPUs.

Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings will invest 500 billion yuan ($70 billion) over the next five years in technology infrastructure including cloud computing, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, the company said Tuesday.

Amazon's cloud computing unit has designed a second, more powerful generation of data center processor chip, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, the latest sign that the company is pouring money into custom silicon for its fastest-growing business.

Oracle and VMware on Monday announced a deal designed to resolve years of tension over how Oracle handles technical support for VMware users and make it easier for them to move to Oracle's cloud computing service.

Total layoffs could affect more than 14,000 jobs.

The news follows Cisco's Tuesday announcement of the acquisition of Cliqr Technologies for about $260 million to enhance offerings in cloud computing management software and services. Leaba's website doesn't elaborate on what its technology provides, but Ynet said it allowed for more efficient and intelligent routing of Internet traffic.

For IBM, converting to the cloud is taking a toll. Even though it's necessary to drive future growth, the company has to sacrifice profits for now.

Intel, AMD and ARM are looking to address new workloads fueled by such trends as cloud computing, mobility, big data and social networks.

Rama Skukla, VP of Intel's architecture group, said during his keynote address to the SEMICON West conference in San Francisco that tablets are disappearing, and that the kind of devices we will be using a decade from now "could not be described." Intel is gearing up for this change, and the next five years will see major advances in processor technology, he added.

Tilera, among the first in a growing number of processor makers looking to manufacture non-x86 chips for servers in cloud computing and other high-performance environments, is getting more support from a number of capital venture companies and tech vendors like Cisco Systems and Samsung.

A new survey reveals that many experts feel that cloud computing and smartphones go together like vodka and Red Bull. What does that mean for IT managers?