DeepSeek hit by cyberattack as users flock to Chinese AI startup

Deepseek logo is seen in this illustration taken Jan 27, 2025. (File photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration)
Chinese startup DeepSeek said on Monday (Jan 27) that it will temporarily limit registrations due to a cyberattack after the company's AI assistant amassed sudden popularity.
DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, faced a cyberattack after its AI assistant, powered by the DeepSeek-V3 AI model, became the top-rated app on the US App Store. Its innovative, cost-efficient AI is challenging US dominance and sparking debate on export controls.
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 on Monday were
Powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, which its creators say "tops the leaderboard among open-source models and rivals the most advanced closed-source models globally", the artificial intelligence application has surged in popularity among US users since it was released on Jan 10, according to app data research firm Sensor Tower.
The milestone highlights how DeepSeek has left a deep impression on Silicon Valley, upending widely held views about US 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 has since 2021 widened the scope of bans designed to stop these chips from being exported to China and used to train Chinese firms' AI models.
However, DeepSeek researchers wrote in a paper last month that the DeepSeek-V3 used Nvidia's H800 chips for training, spending less than US$6 million.
Although this detail has since been disputed, the claim that the chips used were less powerful than the most advanced Nvidia products Washington has sought to keep out of China, as well as the relatively cheap training costs, has prompted US tech executives to question the effectiveness of tech 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 large-language model.
Since then, dozens of Chinese tech companies large and small have released their own AI models, but DeepSeek is the first to be praised by the US tech industry as matching or even surpassing the performance of cutting-edge US models.
Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com
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