Bloomberg: DeepSeek agrees to lead the seed round of robot-AI startup Winverse AI at about $400M
Partly confirmed
The takeaway
Bloomberg reported on Oct 12, 2026 that DeepSeek has agreed to lead the first funding round of Winverse AI, a Chinese startup building AI models for robots, founded in 2026 by former Tencent scientist Hu Han.
Status
- Claim
Partly confirmed
- Our reporting
- Medium confidence
- Importance
- 2 of 5
- Last verified
- 12 October 2026
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Key facts
- Source: Bloomberg, Oct 12, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter (paywalled; read through The Next Web’s summary)
- Seed round of tens of millions of dollars; about $400M post-money valuation; Meituan’s Long-Z Investments also committed
- Not final: the valuation and investor list could still change; some later headlines saying the round ‘completed’ go beyond Bloomberg’s report
- Founder Hu Han led Tencent’s vision-language and robotics AI teams; PhD from Tsinghua University; earlier at Microsoft Research Asia and Baidu
- DeepSeek, Long-Z and Hu did not respond to Bloomberg’s requests for comment
- DeepSeek already bought a stake in Unitree at its Shanghai listing; it is close to raising at least $12B ahead of a listing planned for early 2027
What happened
According to Bloomberg’s sources, DeepSeek will lead the seed round of Winverse AI, a startup only months old. Its founder, Hu Han, left Tencent while Tencent was reorganising its AI research to catch up with DeepSeek and Moonshot. This entry is written from The Next Web’s summary of the paywalled Bloomberg article.
Why it matters
It would be one of DeepSeek’s largest investments in another startup, and a second move into robotics after its Unitree stake. DeepSeek’s own funding round was mainly meant for model training and data centers. A $400M valuation at the seed stage also shows how investors price Chinese “embodied AI” teams led by scientists from the large labs.
Sources
2 sources from 2 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
2 sources: 2 press
Press
- Bloomberg: DeepSeek Backs Ex-Tencent AI Scientist’s $400 Million Robot Labbloomberg.com, press
- The Next Web: DeepSeek to lead seed round in $400mn robot AI start-up, Bloomberg reportsthenextweb.com, press
Changes
- Filed (evening). Written from a summary of the paywalled Bloomberg report