China’s Artificial Intelligence chatbot DeepSeek experienced 7 hours of downtime. It was the longest reported disruption since the launch of the R1 and V3 models. This disruption also raises concerns about platform reliability when user demand increases. The latest outage arrives at an important moment as the company planned to introduce its upcoming AI model, V4.
The widely used Chinese AI chatbot faced its most extensive service disruption on Monday (March 30, 2026). This marked Deepseek’s longest outage since the surge in popularity of its R1 and V3 models last year. According to the company’s status page, the platform experienced a “major outage” lasting approximately 7 hours and 13 minutes.
The company did not provide a reason for the disruption. Industry experts noted that outages of this scale are often caused by server failures, infrastructure, or software bugs introduced during updates.
According to DeepSeek data, its API services have earlier faced stability issues. Despite these, its consumer-facing web interface remained stable. There were a few disruptions that lasted for more than two hours until this latest incident.
The issue began around 9:35 PM local time on 29 March. Users reported problems such as failed logins and delays in generating responses. DeepSeek acknowledged the disruption on its status page shortly after.
Although the company briefly marked the issue as resolved later that night, performance problems continued the next morning. Users experienced intermittent access, slow outputs, and session errors. The final fix was confirmed at 10:33 AM on 30 March.
DeepSeek was targeted by denial-of-service attacks after launching its R1 reasoning model. The company described these as “large-scale malicious attacks”, which highlights the vulnerabilities that can emerge during periods of rapid growth and heightened visibility.
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This incident also highlights a crucial concern that AI platforms face as they attempt to expand quickly. Competition in AI has increased in China recently, following the release of advanced models by Zhipu AI, MiniMax AI, and Moonshot AI. Amid the competition to build more advanced AI systems, this outage highlights the importance of performance, reliability, and innovation.
DeepSeek had also posted several job openings earlier this month, which suggested that the company's latest offering could be in the agentic AI segment.