{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-10-12T22:30:00+02:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-12-deepseek-leads-winverse-ai-seed-round/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-12-deepseek-leads-winverse-ai-seed-round/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"Adam Bicz","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2026-10-12-deepseek-leads-winverse-ai-seed-round","date":"2026-10-12","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Bloomberg: DeepSeek agrees to lead the seed round of robot-AI startup Winverse AI at about $400M","deck":null,"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.","category":"business","category_label":"Business","importance":2,"confidence":"medium","status":{"key":"partly","labels":["Partly confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"Bloomberg: DeepSeek Backs Ex-Tencent AI Scientist's $400 Million Robot Lab","url":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-12/deepseek-backs-ex-tencent-ai-scientist-s-400-million-robot-lab","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"bloomberg.com"},{"n":2,"title":"The Next Web: DeepSeek to lead seed round in $400mn robot AI start-up, Bloomberg reports","url":"https://thenextweb.com/news/deepseek-winverse-ai-robot-seed-round","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"thenextweb.com"}],"official":0,"filed":"2026-10-12","updated":"2026-10-12","orgs":["DeepSeek","Winverse AI","Meituan"],"title":"Bloomberg: DeepSeek agrees to lead the seed round of robot-AI startup Winverse AI at about $400M","summary":"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. The round is worth tens of millions of dollars and values Winverse at about $400 million after the investment. Meituan's investment arm Long-Z has also committed. The deal was not final.","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"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["funding","robotics","embodied-ai","china","deepseek","startup","seed"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nAccording to Bloomberg's sources, DeepSeek will lead the seed round of Winverse AI, a startup only months old. Its founder, Hu Han, left\nTencent while Tencent was reorganising its AI research to catch up with DeepSeek and Moonshot. This entry is written from The Next\nWeb's summary of the paywalled Bloomberg article.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nIt would be one of DeepSeek's largest investments in another startup, and a second move into robotics after its Unitree stake.\nDeepSeek's own funding round was mainly meant for model training and data centers. A $400M valuation at the seed stage also shows how\ninvestors price Chinese \"embodied AI\" teams led by scientists from the large labs.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2026-10-06-deepseek-12b-funding-round","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-06-deepseek-12b-funding-round/","date":"2026-10-06","date_precision":"day","short_title":"DeepSeek nears $12B+ funding round led by Tencent and CATL ahead of an early-2027 IPO","deck":null,"takeaway":"Bloomberg reported on Oct 6, 2026 that DeepSeek is close to raising at least RMB 80B (~$12B), possibly up to ~$14.9B, with Tencent and CATL among the largest investors, ahead of an IPO planned for early 2027.","category":"business","category_label":"Business","importance":4,"confidence":"medium","status":{"key":"partly","labels":["Partly confirmed"]},"sources":3,"official":0,"filed":"2026-10-06","updated":"2026-10-12","orgs":["DeepSeek","Tencent","CATL"]},{"id":"2026-08-19-unitree-ipo-star-market","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-08-19-unitree-ipo-star-market/","date":"2026-08-19","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Unitree Robotics IPO soars ~460% on Shanghai STAR Market debut","deck":null,"takeaway":"The listing puts a public-market price on the humanoid boom and gives China's leading low-cost humanoid maker capital to scale; Unitree's founder targeted 10,000-20,000 humanoid shipments in 2026.","category":"business","category_label":"Business","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":3,"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Unitree Robotics"]}],"people":[],"posts":[],"videos":[],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-10-12","type":"filed","text":"Created (evening). Written from a summary of the paywalled Bloomberg report"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-10-12","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-10-12","human_review":null,"version":null},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":165,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":104,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"gemini-3-8-flash","name":"Gemini 3.8 Flash","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":195,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":134,"in_training_data":false}],"short_url":null}