Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek said on Monday that its new, popular app was hit with a cyber-attack, forcing the company to temporarily limit registrations. The attack came after the DeepSeek AI assistant app skyrocketed to the top of Apple’s App Store, taking over rival OpenAI’s coveted spot as the most-downloaded free app in the U.S. on Apple’s App Store, dethroning ChatGPT for DeepSeek’s own AI Assistant.

DeepSeek said on its status page that it started to investigate the issue late Monday night Beijing time; after two hours of monitoring, the company said it was the victim of a “large-scale malicious attack”. While DeekSeek limited registrations, existing users were still able to log on as usual. The app is now allowing registrations again; the status page reads: “DeepSeek-R1 is now live.”

DeepSeek has generated a lot of buzz in recent weeks as a fast-growing rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and other leading AI tools.  Its quick rise on Monday sent technology stocks tumbling; Nvidia, the AI chip maker and most valuable US company, saw its stocks plummet by 13.6% in early trading.

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