Talk about whiplash.Massive AttackDeepSeek, an AI startup that's risen to fame in a matter of days and has Silicon Valley shaking in its boots, says it has been hit with a major cyberattack.According to a notice on its website, the startup had to limit user registrations after being hit with "large-scale malicious attacks.""Existing users can log in as usual," the message reads. "Thanks for your understanding and support."It remains unclear what's behind these "malicious attacks" as DeepSeek continues to "investigate this issue."But the timing is certainly intriguing. The app's astronomic rise in popularity, eclipsing ChatGPT on Apple's App Store ranks, has rattled Silicon Valley, with major industry players on track to lose a staggering combined $1 trillion in stock value today.Is DeepSeek becoming the victim of its own success? Or might one or more of its adversaries be trying to slow down a major competitor, now that the Trump administration has thrown its full weight behind the AI industry?"Elon reads this and smiles as he looks over the 6,000-person war room he built to hack DeepSeek," tech reporter Matthew Ingram joked in a tweet, insinuating that the multi-hyphenate billionaire had orchestrated a cyberattack against the startup.Spooked CountryWhile we can only speculate as to what's behind the purported cyberattacks, DeepSeek's astronomical rise in popularity and apparent cost efficiency sparked a major selloff in global tech stocks, with AI chipmaker Nvidia sliding by more than 16 percent Monday morning.The company wiped out over half a trillion in market capitalization alone, the greatest one-day value wipeout of a single company in history, according to Forbes.The company's latest R1 model was released last week. According to the company, it's at least as powerful as the latest publicly-released OpenAI model, despite only costing a fraction to train and run. However, its claims have yet to be independently verified.The possibility of the US AI industry falling behind China while potentially wasting billions of dollars on an unnecessary data center buildout has investors spooked.But would that fear be enough to inspire a state-backed hacking attempt targeting DeepSeek, or is the company simply struggling to scale up its operations as countless users flock to its app?It's a rapidly changing situation that will likely have plenty more surprises in store for us.More on DeepSeek: DeepSeek Has a Very Interesting Answer About the Tiananmen Square MassacreShare This Article