The decline deepened following the news that Germany's top privacy regulator had officially declared the Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek "illegal". The regulator invoked the EU's Digital Services Act and warned Apple and Google to remove DeepSeek from their app stores or face consequences, according to Bloomberg.

Germany has taken steps towards blocking Chinese AI startup DeepSeek from the Apple and Google app stores due to concerns about data protection, according to a data protection authority commissioner in a statement on Friday.

Apple Inc. and Google’s Android have been warned by a top German privacy regulator that the Chinese AI service DeepSeek, available on their app stores, constitutes illegal content because it exposes users’ data to Chinese authorities.