DeepSeek Chatbot Outage Lasts Over 7 Hours

China's prominent artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek experienced its longest service outage to date on Monday, March 30, when its flagship chatbot became unavailable for more than seven hours, affecting millions of users worldwide.

The disruption began late Sunday evening in local time and persisted until 10:33 a.m. the following morning, spanning 7 hours and 13 minutes, according to the company's status page. Based in Hangzhou, DeepSeek's chatbot website and mobile app went offline, preventing users from accessing the service that has become integral to daily tasks for many. The outage marked the most extended interruption for the public-facing platform since the debut of its R1 and V3 models early last year, surpassing previous incidents that lasted no longer than two hours.

DeepSeek acknowledged the issue around 9:35 p.m. Sunday and initially reported it resolved after about two hours, but performance problems resurfaced, requiring further interventions. Company records indicate engineers deployed fixes between 1 a.m. and 9 a.m. Monday, with services stabilizing by approximately 9:13 a.m. before the incident was officially closed at 10:33 a.m. The firm stated it was...