The Chinese AI app DeepSeek has ceased operations as of last night, reportedly due to a technical issue. The company behind the app restricted new sign-ups to phone numbers within China, effectively barring international users from registering.
This move appears to be an attempt to limit access to the app amid widespread interest.
A banner on the app’s web chat confirmed that DeepSeek’s services had been targeted by “large-scale malicious attacks,” though it did not specify the origin of the attacks. Earlier in the day, the start-up experienced outages on its website after its AI assistant became the top-rated free app on the US Apple App Store. These disruptions marked the latest in a series of challenges for DeepSeek, which has rapidly gained popularity.
The app’s unexpected success has drawn attention from the tech world, with DeepSeek’s AI models perceived to be on par with those from US-based giants like OpenAI and Meta. This has led to a significant impact on the US tech sector, with companies losing $1 trillion in valuation due to concerns that Chinese AI could surpass US innovations.
Founded in 2023, DeepSeek has emerged as a prominent player in China’s AI landscape, an area that was once thought to be lagging behind US developments. DeepSeek’s models have drawn attention for being much cheaper to operate compared to their US counterparts. This has led to increased scrutiny of US export controls on chips, particularly as DeepSeek’s research team claims to have trained their models using Nvidia’s H800 chips at a cost of under $6 million.
While the effectiveness of these export controls has been questioned, the company behind DeepSeek remains largely unknown, with little information available about its operations. Despite the ongoing disruptions, the success of DeepSeek’s models has sparked praise from US industry leaders, including Alexandr Wang of Scale AI, who described the app’s success as a “wake-up call for America.” Some experts, however, believe the rise of DeepSeek could benefit US competitors by driving cost efficiency and open-source research in AI development.
Although DeepSeek’s rise has triggered concerns about China’s potential to outpace the US in AI, experts like Meta’s Yann LeCun emphasize that the real takeaway is the power of open-source models, suggesting that the competition is about access to open research rather than a shift in global AI dominance. Despite these observations, much about DeepSeek’s operations and its future remains unclear.
