DeepSeek Disrupts U.S. AI Market: A Chinese Breakthrough

DeepSeek, a Chinese startup, faced website outages after becoming the top-rated free app on Apple's U.S. App Store. The AI assistant, powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, has gained popularity, challenging U.S. AI dominance. It has sparked debate over the effectiveness of export controls on advanced chips to China.

On Monday, Chinese startup DeepSeek encountered significant website outages following the surge in popularity of their AI assistant, which recently became the top-rated free application on Apple's App Store in the United States.

According to DeepSeek's status page, the company quickly addressed issues related to its application programming interface and user login failures, marking the longest outage in around 90 days. The popularity spike is attributed to the DeepSeek-V3 model, which is noted for its exceptional performance among open-source AI models.

The success of DeepSeek has stirred conversation in Silicon Valley, challenging perceptions of U.S. supremacy in AI and the effectiveness of export controls limiting China's access to advanced chips. The discussion extends to the use of Nvidia's H800 chips for model training, questioning the impact of Washington's tech bans.

(With inputs from agencies.)