DeepSeek has agreed to lead the first funding round for Winverse AI, a start-up building AI for robots, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The seed round is worth tens of millions of dollars and would value Winverse at about $400mn after the investment. Meituan’s investment arm, Long-Z, has also committed, the people said.
The deal is not final, and the valuation and investors could change, they added.
A Tencent scientist goes solo
Winverse was founded this year by Hu Han, who led Tencent’s vision-language and robotics AI teams. He has a PhD from Tsinghua University and has worked at Microsoft Research Asia and Baidu.
He left Tencent as it reshuffled its AI research team to catch up with rivals such as DeepSeek and Moonshot.
From models to machines
It would be one of DeepSeek’s biggest bets on a start-up. The lab already bought a stake in humanoid robot maker Unitree when it listed in Shanghai.
DeepSeek is close to raising at least $12bn in a round backed by Tencent, ahead of a planned listing in early 2027. That money was mainly meant for training models and data centres.
China leads in building robot bodies. Making them smart enough to handle real-world tasks needs different AI from chatbots, and US rivals such as Skild AI and Physical Intelligence are already valued in the billions.
DeepSeek, Long-Z and Hu did not respond to Bloomberg’s requests for comment.
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