DeepSeek has agreed to lead a seed round worth tens of millions of dollars in Winverse AI, a robotics AI startup founded by former Tencent AI scientist Hu Han, Bloomberg reported on October 12, in what would be one of DeepSeek's largest investments in an external startup to date.
Winverse AI, founded only months ago, is dedicated to developing AI models for robots. Hu Han previously led Tencent's visual-language and embodied foundation model team. Besides DeepSeek, the startup has received investment commitments from other backers including Meituan's Long-Z Investments, with a post-money valuation of approximately US$400 million.
The deal underscores DeepSeek's expanding interest in embodied intelligence and robotics applications, extending its influence beyond foundation models into the physical world of AI. It also adds to a busy week for Chinese AI financing, with multimodal model company Mosi Intelligence announcing a Pre-A round of over 1 billion yuan and embodied intelligence firm Oula Wanxiang closing a several-hundred-million-yuan angel-plus round the same day.
Analysts say capital is rotating toward applications and embodied intelligence as foundation-model competition matures, with robotics AI emerging as a key arena where Chinese AI companies and investors see the next wave of opportunities.
