China's DeepSeek AI chatbot suffers major outage since 2025 breakthrough
DeepSeek experienced its longest service disruption to date
China’s fast-rising AI startup DeepSeek experienced its longest service disruption to date on Monday, raising fresh concerns about reliability as competition in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector intensifies.
According to the company’s status page, the outage lasted approximately seven hours and 13 minutes, beginning in the early hours of the morning and resolving at 10:33am local time.
The incident was classified as a “major outage,” marking the most prolonged downtime since the chatbot’s surge in popularity following the release of its R1 and V3 models in early 2025.
DeepSeek did not disclose the cause of the disruption, in line with its usual protocol.
Industry experts note that outages of this scale can stem from a variety of issues, including server failures, infrastructure overload, or software bugs introduced through system updates.
While DeepSeek’s application programming interface (API) — widely used by developers — experienced multiple extended outages during the peak of its viral growth in January 2025, its consumer-facing chatbot interface had, until now, avoided disruptions lasting more than two hours.
The incident comes at a critical time for DeepSeek, as anticipation builds around its next-generation AI model.
The company has yet to provide a timeline for its release, but expectations remain high amid intensifying global competition in generative AI.
Monday’s outage underscores the technical challenges facing rapidly scaling AI platforms, where surging demand and complex infrastructure can strain even the most advanced systems.