TECH

DeepSeek Restores Services After Nearly Five-Hour Outage

Published: Oct. 16, 2026 4:12 a.m. GMT+8

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DeepSeek’s website and app display a “Server temporarily unavailable” message after 8 a.m. Beijing time on Oct. 15. Photo: IC

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek experienced a nearly five-hour outage on Thursday, disrupting services across its website, app and application programming interface.

The disruption began at 8:11 a.m. local time, partially affecting the DeepSeek-V4-Pro and DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash APIs and chat services. The chat function went fully offline at 9:08 a.m. DeepSeek said it identified the cause and restored all services by 1:04 p.m.

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DeepSeek suffered a nearly five-hour outage Thursday, its fifth in October, disrupting website, app, and APIs.
Cause undisclosed; computing constraints are a common industry issue, prompting API pricing changes and Huawei partnership.
Raised 50 billion yuan ($7.5B) at 350B valuation, targeting 500B pre-money, to fund research and a 1GW data center.

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Who’s Who

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What Happened When

Earlier 2026：: Zhipu AI, MiniMax, and Kimi experienced API overloads or disruptions.

Late March 2026：: DeepSeek suffered a nearly 12-hour outage.

2026-06：: 3 technical issues recorded in June 2026.

2026-07：: 8 technical issues recorded in July 2026.

2026-08：: No operational anomalies recorded in August 2026; DeepSeek sharply raised prices for DeepSeek-V4-Pro and introduced peak/off-peak rates.

2026-09：: 13 technical issues recorded, mostly degraded performance; DeepSeek lowered prices for Flash models; released open-source infrastructure components for Huawei's Ascend platform.

2026-10-12：: 15-minute service interruption on October 12, 2026.

2026-10-15：: Outage on October 15, 2026. Disruption began at 8:11 a.m. local time; chat fully offline at 9:08 a.m.; all services restored by 1:04 p.m.

2026 (ongoing)：: DeepSeek fundraising includes initial 50 billion yuan round at 350 billion yuan valuation and second round targeting ~500 billion yuan pre-money valuation; new data center in Ulanqab planned with 1 GW capacity; joint development with Huawei on Ascend 950 chip.

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