The U.S. Defense Department has added dozens of Chinese companies, including games and technology company Tencent, artificial intelligence firm SenseTime and the world's biggest battery maker CATL, to a list of companies it says have ties to China's military.

The Defense Department added video game maker Tencent Holdings to its "blacklist" of companies doing business in the U.S. while allegedly aiding the Chinese military.

But several US-based videogame companies, including Microsoft, would be considered US military companies if the same metric was applied to them.