Bloomberg reported on October 12 that DeepSeek is set to lead the seed round of robotics AI startup Winverse AI. The company was founded by Hu Han, a former Tencent scientist. The round is worth tens of millions of dollars at a post-money valuation of roughly $400 million, and investors including Longzhu Capital, the venture arm of Meituan, have also committed funds.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the report said the deal has not been finalized, and both the valuation and the list of participants could change. If it closes on current terms, it would be one of DeepSeek's largest investments in a startup to date. Neither DeepSeek nor Winverse responded, so the terms cannot be verified for now.
Who is the founder
Hu Han is a familiar name in computer vision. According to earlier reports, he was a principal researcher in the visual computing group at Microsoft Research Asia, joined Tencent in early 2025 to lead research on large vision models, and was later moved to the frontier technology research group in the large language model department, where he served as head of Hunyuan multimodal understanding and also took part in world model development.
In July this year, Zhineng Yongxian (Emergence), a publication under 36Kr, reported that he had filed to leave and was preparing to start a company. His successor was said to be Tian Yonglong, a former OpenAI researcher; Tencent did not reply at the time. Three months later, the new company's name has surfaced together with its first funding round.
Judging by his résumé, multimodal understanding and world models are exactly the underlying capabilities robots need to make sense of their surroundings and predict the consequences of their actions, so a researcher with a vision background moving into robot AI is not surprising. Still, whether Winverse is building a general-purpose robot brain, complete machines for a specific type of scenario, or models supplied to hardware makers has not been publicly explained, and the product shape will have to wait until the company discloses it.
Large-model companies are betting on embodied AI in different ways
This is the second time DeepSeek has made a move in robotics. Reuters previously reported, citing exchange filings, that DeepSeek subscribed to RMB 140.8 million of the strategic placement in Unitree Robotics' listing, equal to 2.31% of the placement, with a 36-month lock-up, and that the two sides also signed an agreement to jointly develop AI models for humanoid robots.
The two investments are very different in nature. Backing Unitree meant buying into an already mass-producing hardware maker at the listing stage, with the amount and price set by issuance rules. Leading Winverse means betting at the seed stage on one researcher and a direction that has not been made public, which carries far higher risk and far more influence.
Compared across the board, Chinese internet companies approach embodied AI with different emphases. According to public reports, Ant Group has invested in more than a dozen humanoid robot companies in a year and a half, taking a wide-net approach, while Meituan keeps following in rounds through Longzhu Capital and appears on Winverse's list this time as well. DeepSeek has long focused on model research and rarely invests externally. This deal suggests that a model company is starting to look for partners at the robotics layer, rather than waiting for hardware makers to call its API.
Where the money comes from
DeepSeek has just completed its own first external funding round. As we reported earlier, the round was about RMB 50 billion, with Tencent and CATL among the participants, and it was agreed that they would not receive voting rights for five years. With outside capital now on its books, DeepSeek has begun placing bets outside the company, and the timing lines up.
Tens of millions of dollars is not a large sum for a company of DeepSeek's size. Whether the deal will close at the current valuation, whether Winverse will use DeepSeek's models, and whether the two sides have any technical tie-up are all questions the Bloomberg report does not address, and for now the final announcement will have to settle them.
Sources: Bloomberg, 36Kr Zhineng Yongxian, CocoLoop, Reuters; exchange filings verified the amount, share and lock-up period of DeepSeek's subscription to Unitree's strategic placement.