Chinese AI sensation DeepSeek on Monday said it was limiting the registration of new users due to large-scale cyberattacks on its services.

The company, whose chatbot took over OpenAI’s ChatGPT as Apple’s top downloaded app on Monday, cited “large-scale malicious attacks” for outages and its inability to take on new users.

DeepSeek, which was developed by a start-up based in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, has shown the ability to match the capacity of AI pace-setters such as Nvidia.

Its success on the US app store sent shares in AI-linked tech giants plummeting on Monday.

The low-cost Chinese generative AI venture is thought to have matched US companies in its abilities but at a fraction of the cost.

Analysts had long thought that the United States’ critical advantage over China when it comes to producing high-powered chips — and its ability to prevent the Asian power from accessing the technology — would give it the edge in the AI race.

Available as an app or on desktop, DeepSeek can do many of the things that its Western competitors can do — write song lyrics, help work on a personal development plan, or even write a recipe for dinner based on what´s in the fridge.

It is however subject to the censorship seen in other Chinese-made chatbots like Baidu’s Ernie Bot that are very limited on how they interact on political topics.