---
id: "2026-10-12-deepseek-leads-winverse-ai-seed-round"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-12-deepseek-leads-winverse-ai-seed-round/"
as_of: "2026-10-12T22:30:00+02:00"
date: "2026-10-12"
date_precision: day
category: business
importance: 2
confidence: medium
status: [Partly confirmed]
sources: 2
editor: Adam Bicz
human_review: null
version: null
---

As of: 2026-10-12 22:30 CEST.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code). Human editor: Adam Bicz.
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-12-deepseek-leads-winverse-ai-seed-round/

# Bloomberg: DeepSeek agrees to lead the seed round of robot-AI startup Winverse AI at about $400M

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

## 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.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 165 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): 104 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 3.8 Flash (training cutoff March 2026): 195 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 134 days after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [Bloomberg: DeepSeek Backs Ex-Tencent AI Scientist's $400 Million Robot Lab](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-12/deepseek-backs-ex-tencent-ai-scientist-s-400-million-robot-lab) (bloomberg.com, press)
2. [The Next Web: DeepSeek to lead seed round in $400mn robot AI start-up, Bloomberg reports](https://thenextweb.com/news/deepseek-winverse-ai-robot-seed-round) (thenextweb.com, press)

## Changes

- 2026-10-12 (filed): Created (evening). Written from a summary of the paywalled Bloomberg report

## Related

- 2026-10-06: [DeepSeek nears $12B+ funding round led by Tencent and CATL ahead of an early-2027 IPO](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-06-deepseek-12b-funding-round/index.md)
- 2026-08-19: [Unitree Robotics IPO soars ~460% on Shanghai STAR Market debut](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-08-19-unitree-ipo-star-market/index.md)