Catenaa, Monday, October 12, 2026- DeepSeek will lead a seed financing round for Chinese AI startup Winverse AI, which would value it at $400 million.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that Winverse AI has secured long-term commitments from other investors, including Meituan’s Long-Z Investments, valuing the firm at $400 million.
Bloomberg also said the founding round would draw on capital from DeepSeek’s own fundraising, which is close to securing more than $12 billion, ahead of a planned market debut in early 2027.
According to Bloomberg, that capital was primarily earmarked for model training and data centers, but may also support investments in startups for joint development.
The deal remains subject to change, with both the valuation and the roster of participating investors still unsettled, Bloomberg said.
Winverse was created by Hu Han, who last served as head of Tencent’s vision-language and embodied foundation model teams as lead scientist.
According to his GitHub page, he holds a PhD from Tsinghua University and previously worked at Microsoft Research Asia and Baidu.
Hu’s departure from Tencent coincided with a restructuring of the WeChat operator’s AI research team, a bid to catch up with rivals like DeepSeek and Moonshot.
Bloomberg reported that the investment would extend DeepSeek’s presence in robotics beyond financial stakes, as the lab took a 2.31% strategic stake in humanoid robot maker Unitree Robotics ahead of Unitree’s Shanghai listing in August and committed to a 36-month lock-up period, triple the hold period most other strategic investors accepted.
Bloomberg cited analysts who viewed DeepSeek’s investment in Unitree as a potential strategic collaboration rather than a transaction focused primarily on financial returns.
China has built a strong manufacturing base for humanoid robot hardware, but developing the AI models that let robots interpret speech and perform complex real-world tasks remains a separate, less developed field, according to Bloomberg.
Quartz reported that US startups Skild AI and Physical Intelligence, which develop general-purpose AI for robots, are valued at $14 billion and $5.6 billion respectively and have attracted backing from Nvidia and Alphabet, Bloomberg said.
The development of humanoid robots increasingly depends on advances in AI systems that can interpret human instructions, navigate physical environments, and complete practical tasks. These capabilities require technologies that differ from those primarily designed for text-based interactions.
