Cyber-Attack Hits Rising AI Chatbot DeepSeek as It Dominates US App Market

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DeepSeek, a rapidly popularizing AI assistant similar to ChatGPT, experienced a significant cyber-attack on Monday, prompting the Chinese company to temporarily suspend new user registrations. This incident occurred shortly after DeepSeek's app soared to the top of Apple’s App Store in the US and ranked highly on Google’s Play Store, becoming the highest-rated free app in the country.

The company announced that it started investigating the situation late Monday night, Beijing time. Following two hours of monitoring, it confirmed being targeted by a "large-scale malicious attack." While new registrations were halted, existing users continued to access the service. As of now, DeepSeek has resumed accepting new registrations, stating that "DeepSeek-R1 is now live."

The app’s sudden popularity has triggered a notable decline in global tech shares. Nvidia, a leading AI chip manufacturer, saw its stock drop by 13.6% in early trading, resulting in a loss of approximately $500 billion in market capitalization. Analysts noted that DeepSeek's success in creating a competitive AI assistant with a significantly lower budget—around $5 million—could pose a challenge to the US's dominance in the AI market.

Investor Marc Andreessen referred to this situation as "AI’s Sputnik moment," while entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy echoed that such moments could serve as a wake-up call rather than a cause for alarm. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump unveiled a new $500 billion AI project called Stargate in collaboration with OpenAI, Softbank, and Oracle, which has drawn both interest and criticism within the technology community.

DeepSeek has not issued a public comment regarding the attack.

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