DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup, has restricted new user sign-ups to those with mainland China telephone numbers. Reason: The company is citing “large-scale malicious attacks” on its systems. This comes after a surge in demand following the release of its AI chatbot, which it claims rivals OpenAI‘s ChatGPT but was developed at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek‘s AI Assistant briefly surpassed ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app in the U.S. on Apple’s App Store, contributing to a significant drop in U.S. and European tech stock values, as investors reassessed valuations.
The company’s status page indicated a service incident resolved by 9:32 p.m. China time on Monday (January 27), shortly after its disclosure. The page also showed API issues earlier that day and on Sunday (January 26). This outage was the most significant since DeepSeek began tracking its service status and coincided with the app’s rise in app store popularity.
What the message on Deepseek’s status board said
“Currently, only registration with a mainland China mobile phone number is supported,” the company posted on its status page. DeepSeek did not specify whether the signup curbs are temporary or how long they will last.
This is reported to be the AI startup’s longest major outage since it started reporting its status and corresponds with the app rocketing to popularity in the Apple and Android app stores.
Deepsake’s cost factor behind rout in US stock market
DeepSeek, founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, asserts its chatbot competes with the latest technology from OpenAI and Meta at a fraction of the cost. The company has stated that existing users can still log in despite the temporary registration limitations.
The startup has gained attention as a rapidly growing competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and other leading AI tools. The release of its R1 model last week fueled discussions among tech analysts, investors, and developers, raising concerns about falling behind in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. This is especially relevant in the generative AI space, where companies are racing to maintain their position in a market projected to generate over $1 trillion in revenue within the next ten years.
DeepSeek reportedly originated from a Chinese hedge fund’s AI research unit in April 2023, focusing on large language models and the pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI), an AI branch aiming to match or exceed human intellect across various tasks. This goal is also shared by OpenAI and its competitors.