- This marks the longest single service disruption on record since DeepSeek's inception.
- DeepSeek ranks among China's most popular artificial intelligence applications.
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) platform DeepSeek suffered an unexpected outage lasting nearly 12 hours, a sudden service disruption that has drawn widespread attention.
The company's web and mobile applications were paralyzed from the night of March 29 through the morning of March 30 Beijing time, with masses of users reporting failures to initiate new chats or experiencing sudden disconnections.
System anomalies were initially detected at 9:35 pm on March 29, prompting the technical team to launch two rounds of emergency troubleshooting and repairs, according to the DeepSeek Service Status website.
Platform services remained highly unstable during this period until around 10:00 am on March 30, when all core functions finally resumed full normal operations.
This marks the longest single service disruption on record since DeepSeek's inception, with the platform having experienced at least seven significant outages over the past 15 months.
Previously, in January and March of 2025, the platform suffered brief downtimes triggered by malicious attacks and a surge in user traffic following new model releases.
According to venture capital firm a16z, DeepSeek ranked fourth globally in the March list of generative AI applications for web platforms, making it the highest-ranked Chinese AI application.
As of the third quarter of 2025, DeepSeek's monthly active users reached 145 million. Alongside ByteDance's Doubao, it forms the top tier of China's AI application market, according to data from QuestMobile.
The over 10-hour system crash represents more than just a technical challenge for a single company; it also reflects the increasingly severe computing power shortage plaguing the global AI industry.
Global demand for AI computing power surged 45% year-on-year in 2025, while supply grew by only about 20%. This massive supply-demand gap continues to exacerbate the daily load on servers.
