The startup earlier in the day was also hit by outages on its website after its AI assistant became the top-rated free application available on Apple’s App Store in the United States
Chinese startup DeepSeek said Monday it will temporarily limit registrations due to a cyberattack after the company’s AI assistant amassed sudden popularity.
The startup earlier in the day was also hit by outages on its website after its AI assistant became the top-rated free application available on Apple’s App Store in the United States.
The company resolved issues relating to its application programming interface and users’ inability to log in to the website, according to its status page. The outages Monday were the company’s longest in around 90 days and coincided with its sky-rocketing popularity.
DeepSeek last week launched a free assistant it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost of incumbent players’ models, possibly marking a turning point in the level of investment needed for AI.
The artificial intelligence application has surged in popularity among U.S. users since it was released Jan. 10, according to app data research company Sensor Tower.
The milestone highlights how DeepSeek has left a deep impression on Silicon Valley, upending widely held views about U.S. primacy in AI and the effectiveness of Washington’s export controls targeting China’s advanced chip and AI capabilities.
Technology stocks were hammered on Monday, sending the shares of Nvidia and Oracle plummeting.
AI models from ChatGPT to DeepSeek require advanced chips to power their training. The Biden administration had since 2021 widened the scope of bans designed to stop these chips from being exported to China and used to train Chinese companies’ AI models.