DeepSeek hit with âlargescaleâ cyberattack after AI chatbot tops app stores DeepSeek The Guardian

pAttack forces Chinese company to temporarily limit registrations as app becomes highest rated free app in USppDeepSeek said its newly popular app was hit with a cyberattack on Monday which forced the Chinese company to temporarily limit registrations The attack came after the DeepSeek AI assistant app soared to the top of Appleâs App Store becoming the highest rated free app in the US and climbed high in Googleâs Play StoreppOn its status page DeepSeek said it started to investigate the issue late Monday night Beijing time After about two hours of monitoring the company said it was the victim of a âlargescale malicious attackâ While DeepSeek limited registrations existing users were still able to log on as usual The app is now allowing registrations againppSign up to TechScapeppA weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our livesppafter newsletter promotionppDeepSeekâs app is an AI assistant similar to OpenAIâs ChatGPT chatbot The news of the appâs ascendency in the US â and ability to edge out American rivals for a fraction of the cost â sent technology stocks tumbling on Monday Nvidia the AI chip maker and most valuable US company saw its stocks plummet by 136 in early trading wiping out some 500bn in market capitalizationppSome tech investors were impressed at how quickly DeepSeek was able to create an AI assistant that nearly equals Googleâs and OpenAIâs for roughly 5m while other AI companies spend billions for the same results particularly with China under strict chip export controls that limit DeepSeekâs access to computational power The modelâs lowbudget success could threaten the USâs lead in the AI marketppâDeepseek R1 is AIâs Sputnik momentâ the investor Marc Andreessen wrote on X Carrying on the âSputnikâ theme Vivek Ramaswamy posted âSputniklike moments are a good thing We donât need to freak out we just need to wake upâ Ramaswamy is an entrepreneur and politician who is close to Donald TrumpppTrump himself announced a new 500bn AI venture called Stargate last week It is a collaboration with OpenAI Softbank and Oracle and the president guaranteed it would be âthe future of technologyâ in the US The announcement was derided by the Trump ally and AI pioneer Elon Musk who got into a tiff on X with OpenAIâs CEO Sam Altman over how much money Stargate actually has to investppTrump who was attending a House Republicans conference in Florida said the emergence of DeepSeek should be a âwakeup callâ for US companies He said American companies âneed to be laserfocused on competing to winâppTrump said his decision to revoke the Biden AI rules through executive order would allow AI companies to âfocus on being the bestâ instead of on being the most âwokeâppDeepSeek did not return a request for commentp