Cyberattack Hits DeepSeek After U.S. App Store Surge

On Monday Chinese startup DeepSeek App leaped to the top of the U.S. App Store, as well as many other countries, in a very short space of time.

After few hours it was hit by a massive cyber attack, disrupting user registrations on its platform.

Key Points

• DeepSeek’s recently launched new reasoning model, R1, has overtaken rival ChatGPT to become the top-rated free application available on Apple’s App Store in the United States.
• A selloff led by Chinese AI developer DeepSeek’s rise caused major indices to plunge.
• The world’s 500 richest people, led by Jensen Huang (Nvidia Corp. co-founder), lost a combined $108 billion.
• After overtaking rival ChatGPT to become the top-rated, DeepSeek was attacked by cyber criminals.
• DeepSeek has confirmed the attack and said it is taking precautionary steps to mitigate any further damage, though the extent of the attack is unclear for the moment.
• DeepSeek said it suffered “large-scale malicious attacks” on its services. While existing users could log in without any issues, new users were unable to register.
• The cyber attack and its implications have brought fresh attention to the challenges faced by AI startups, especially those competing in the high-stakes global technology sector.

Why Deepseek Toped the app list

DeepSeek has managed to develop models that rival the performance of its competitors at fraction of the cost.

This affordability contrasts sharply with US companies, which have spent billions on acquiring NVIDIA H100 chips and data for their models as NVIDIA’s flagship GPU, the H100 is to China due to US sanctions.

Instead, DeepSeek built trained its V3 model for under $6 million using 2,000 NVIDIA H800 chips—a downgraded with slower data transfer speeds.

Currently, OpenAI’s ChatGPT holds the second position on Apple’s US chart, while Deep’s R1 model reigns supreme.

News Gist

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s app surged to the top of the U.S. App Store following the launch of its new reasoning model, R1.

However, it faced a massive cyberattack disrupting user registrations. Meanwhile, a selloff in Chinese AI stocks led by DeepSeek caused major indices to drop, erasing $108 billion from global wealth.