Chinese Startup DeepSeek Limits Registrations Following Cyberattack Amid Soaring Popularity
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek announced on Monday that it would temporarily restrict new registrations after a cyberattack disrupted its operations. The announcement follows a surge in the popularity of its AI assistant, which recently became the top-rated free app on Apple’s App Store in the United States.
Earlier in the day, DeepSeek’s website experienced significant outages as its application’s sudden success overwhelmed its infrastructure. According to the company’s status page, issues with its application programming interface and website login functions were resolved later that day. The outage, the longest in approximately 90 days, coincided with a dramatic increase in demand for the company’s services.
DeepSeek’s rise has been driven by its new AI assistant, launched on January 10, which the company claims offers advanced capabilities while using less data and costing a fraction of competing models. Powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, the assistant has rapidly gained popularity in the U.S., according to app data firm Sensor Tower.
The DeepSeek-V3 model has been hailed as a breakthrough in AI development, with its creators asserting that it matches or surpasses the performance of top-tier closed-source models. This achievement has drawn significant attention from Silicon Valley and challenged perceptions of U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence. It also raises questions about the effectiveness of U.S. export controls designed to limit China’s access to advanced AI technology.
AI models like DeepSeek and OpenAI’s ChatGPT rely on powerful chips for training. Since 2021, the Biden administration has expanded restrictions to prevent the export of these chips to China. However, DeepSeek researchers claimed in a recent paper that the DeepSeek-V3 model was trained using Nvidia’s H800 chips, reportedly spending less than $6 million. While this claim has been disputed, the use of less advanced chips at relatively low costs has prompted U.S. tech leaders to reassess the impact of these export controls.
Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Hangzhou, DeepSeek is a newcomer to the competitive AI landscape. It emerged shortly after Baidu introduced China’s first large-language AI model. While numerous Chinese companies have since developed their own models, DeepSeek is the first to earn widespread praise from the U.S. tech industry for rivaling or exceeding the capabilities of leading American models.
The company’s sudden rise underscores the shifting dynamics in global AI innovation, as well as the growing challenges faced by policymakers attempting to regulate the flow of advanced technology. Meanwhile, U.S. tech stocks, including Nvidia and Oracle, faced sharp declines on Monday amid the developments.
