DeepSeek hit by outages as users flock to Chinese AI startup

Chinese startup DeepSeek said on Monday that it is temporarily limiting registrations due to a large-scale malicious attack on its services.

DeepSeek was hit by outages on its website after its AI assistant became the top-rated free app available on Apple’s US App Store.

The company resolved issues with its API and users’ inability to log in to the website, according to its status page. Monday’s outage was the company’s longest in about 90 days and coincides with its skyrocketing popularity.

Powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, which its creators say “leads among open-source models and rivals the most advanced closed-source models globally,” the AI ​​application has grown in popularity among US users since it was released in January. . 10, according to apps data research firm Sensor Tower.

The highlight highlights how DeepSeek has made a deep impression on Silicon Valley, overturning widely held views about US preeminence in AI and the effectiveness of Washington’s export controls targeting China’s advanced chip and AI capabilities .

AI models from ChatGPT to DeepSeek require advanced chips to power their training. The Biden administration has since 2021 expanded the scope of bans designed to stop the export of these chips to China and their use to train AI models of Chinese firms.

However, DeepSeek researchers wrote in a paper last month that DeepSeek-V3 used Nvidia’s H800 chips for training, spending less than $6 million.

Although that detail has since been disputed, claims that the chips used were less powerful than Nvidia’s more advanced products that Washington has sought to keep out of China, as well as relatively cheap training costs, have put them off. American technology leaders question the effectiveness. of technology export controls.

Little is known about the company behind DeepSeek, a small Hangzhou-based startup founded in 2023, when search engine giant Baidu released the first Chinese AI model in big language.

Since then, dozens of Chinese tech companies big and small have released their own AI models, but DeepSeek is the first to be rated by the US tech industry as matching or even exceeding the performance of the latest US models.