DeepSeek Downtime: AI Chatbot Faces Record 7-Hour Service Outage
China’s popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot DeepSeek experienced a record-long service disruption. The chatbot’s web and app services remained down from Sunday (29 March) night until Monday morning. According to DeepSeek’s status page, the issue was resolved at 10:33 am on Monday. The total duration of the outage was 7 hours and 13 minutes, reports Reuters.
In reality, the disruption lasted even longer. The problem was first detected at 9:35 pm on Sunday, and after repeated repair attempts, services were fully restored around 10:00 am the following day. This marks the longest service outage since the platform went viral in January last year.
In line with company policy, the cause of the disruption was not disclosed. Previously, DeepSeek’s webpage for general users had never remained inoperative for more than two hours. However, in late January 2025, the API services for developers had experienced disruptions for several consecutive days.
Notably, DeepSeek has approximately 150 million regular users. During the outage, a massive number of users attempted to access the app simultaneously, further exacerbating the issue.
The global AI industry is now awaiting DeepSeek’s next-generation model. However, the company has not provided any indication regarding its release timeline.
DBTech/BMT/OR
