DeepSeek outage leaves millions cut off and sparks complaints as rivals gain ground

AdvertisementDeepSeekTechBig TechDeepSeek outage leaves millions cut off and sparks complaints as rivals gain groundChinese AI start-up restores chatbot service by Monday morning after overnight disruption affects millions of users2-MIN READ2-MIN ListenBen Jiangin BeijingPublished: 11:41am, 30 Mar 2026Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek suffered a prolonged outage overnight that extended into early Monday morning, disrupting service for hundreds of millions of users, according to a company notice and user feedback.The Hangzhou-based AI lab’s namesake chatbot website and app were offline from Sunday evening, with the company continuing to investigate while issuing fixes from between 1am and 9am on Monday, according to service maintenance records the company published online.The service appeared to be restored by 9.13am, according to a trial use by the South China Morning Post. At the time, DeepSeek said in its records that “a fix” had been implemented and added it was continuing to monitor the results.AdvertisementChinese social media platforms were flooded with posts from users across the country complaining about the breakdown.DeepSeek had more than 355 million users as of February. Photo: Xinhua“Only after DeepSeek went down did I realise I no longer knew how to work without it,” user yezi888 said on Xiaohongshu, a lifestyle platform known in the US as RedNote.AdvertisementAdvertisementSelect VoiceSelect Speed0.8x0.9x1.0x1.1x1.2x1.5x1.75x00:0000:001.00x