Nov 3 (Reuters) - China has increased subsidies that cut

energy bills by up to half for some of the country's largest

data centres, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing

people familiar with the matter.

Local governments have beefed up incentives to help Chinese

tech giants such as ByteDance, Alibaba ( BABA ) and Tencent ( TCTZF )

, which have been hit with higher electricity costs

following Beijing's ban on purchasing Nvidia's ( NVDA )

artificial intelligence chips, the newspaper reported.

Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.

(Reporting by Nilutpal Timsina in Bengaluru; Editing by

Subhranshu Sahu)