Beijing is weighing holding up US chipmaker Broadcom Inc's $69 billion purchase of cloud computing company VMware Inc, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. China's State Administration of Market Regulation has not signed off on the deal and is likely to delay approving the transaction after US President Joe Biden's administration introduced tougher chip controls on Tuesday, the report added, citing people familiar with the matter.

VMWare and Broadcom did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment. China's State Administration of Market Regulation could not immediately be reached for comment. Broadcom said in May 2022 it would acquire VMware in a deal consisting of $61 billion in equity and the rest in debt, the chipmaker's biggest and boldest bid to diversify its business into enterprise software.

(Reporting by Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)