In BriefPosted:10:05 AM PST January 27, 2025Image Credits:Anadmist / Getty ImagesAI startup DeepSeek pauses signups amid cyber incidentDeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup that made waves in the AI world last week when it released its open-source R1 model, is pausing new user signups.The company has temporarily paused new user registrations this morning, according to CNBC reporting, due to a cyberattack. Existing users can still access their accounts with no issue.TechCrunch reached out to DeepSeek for comment and will update the story if we hear back.This comes just days after DeepSeek first became the topic du jour of the AI world, driven by industry excitement over its R1 model. DeepSeek claims its reasoning model beats OpenAIs o1 on multiple benchmarks. Today the company released a new image model family.DeepSeeks app hit 2.6 million downloads on Sunday, according to data from Appfigures, with 1 million downloads coming from last Friday alone.Topics