DeepSeek’s chatbot experienced a significant outage lasting over seven hours overnight in China, leading the AI firm to roll out multiple updates in an attempt to resolve the problem.

Users first reported disruptions on Sunday evening, according to Downdetector.

The company’s status page confirmed an initial issue at 9:35 p.m., which it marked as resolved two hours later.

On Monday, further updates indicated DeepSeek was addressing additional performance problems, with a final fix reportedly deployed around 9:13 a.m.

It remains unclear whether the outage has been fully resolved, though some users reported regaining access to the chatbot.

“A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results,” the company said, the company said, offering no further details.

The prolonged outage is unusual for a widely used app like DeepSeek, which has been hailed as China’s breakthrough AI service for over a year.

It is also rare for the company itself, which has maintained nearly a 99 per cent uptime record since launching the popular R1 in January 2025, according to its status page.