DeepSeek, the rapidly rising Chinese AI startup, announced Monday it would temporarily restrict new user registrations following what it described as "large-scale malicious attacks" on its services. The company noted that existing users can continue accessing their accounts normally.
The cyberattack comes just as DeepSeek reached a major milestone, overtaking OpenAI's ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free app on Apple's App Store in the United States. The company has emerged as a strong competitor to established AI leaders like OpenAI and Google in recent weeks.
Founded in 2023 from a Chinese hedge fund's AI research division, DeepSeek made waves last week with the release of its R1 reasoning model, which rivals OpenAI's offerings. The open-source model has garnered praise from users for its performance and capabilities.
What sets DeepSeek apart is its cost-effective development approach. According to Jefferies analysts, the R1 model's training costs were estimated at just $5.6 million - less than 10% of the cost of Meta's Llama model. This efficiency was achieved despite U.S. restrictions on chip exports to China.
The company's rapid rise and cost-effective innovation has sparked industry-wide discussions about the sustainability of massive funding rounds and billion-dollar valuations in the AI sector, with some questioning if the market is heading toward a bubble.
DeepSeek's focus remains on developing large language models and advancing toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) - AI systems capable of matching or exceeding human intelligence across various tasks. The company competes in a market projected to generate over $1 trillion in revenue within ten years.