DeepSeek Set to Lead Seed Round for Ex-Tencent Scientist's Robotics Startup at About $400 Million Valuation

DeepSeek is preparing to put some of its war chest into robots, according to a Bloomberg report. The Hangzhou lab is set to lead the first funding round for Winverse AI, a robotics-AI startup only a few months old, Bloomberg reported on Monday, October 12, citing people familiar with the matter, according to Investing.com and Quartz, which both relay the Bloomberg story.

The terms, as reported

• Size: a seed round worth tens of millions of dollars, not $400 million.
• Valuation: other investors, including Meituan's Long-Z Investments, have committed on terms that would value Winverse at roughly $400 million after the investment.
• Status: the deal has not been finalised, and the valuation and investor list could change.
• Funding source: DeepSeek would draw on its own fundraising, which Bloomberg earlier reported is close to at least 80 billion yuan (about $12 billion), as we covered in DeepSeek Nears an 80B-Yuan Round.

Who is behind Winverse

Winverse was founded in 2026 by Hu Han, who most recently led Tencent's vision-language and embodied foundation model teams as lead scientist. He holds a Tsinghua PhD and has worked at Microsoft Research Asia and Baidu. Investing.com says his exit coincided with a restructuring of Tencent's AI research team. Hu, DeepSeek and Long-Z did not respond to requests for comment, Quartz says, citing Bloomberg.

Why DeepSeek would do this

Bloomberg frames it as one of DeepSeek's biggest startup bets and a push into real-world uses such as humanoid robots. China leads in robot hardware, but the models that let robots handle speech and real tasks are a separate, less developed field, the report says, pointing to US rivals Skild AI and Physical Intelligence, valued at $14 billion and $5.6 billion. DeepSeek already took a small stake in Unitree Robotics at its Shanghai listing; Investing.com puts it at 2% and Quartz at 2.31%.

Limits

• Everything here traces to one anonymously sourced Bloomberg report; Investing.com and Quartz are relays, not independent confirmation.
• Bloomberg's original is paywalled and was not read directly.

Sources

• Investing.com: DeepSeek to lead funding round for robotics AI startup Winverse at $400 mln - report (October 12, 2026; relaying Bloomberg)
• Quartz: DeepSeek is moving to lead a $400 million seed round for a Chinese robotics AI startup (October 12, 2026; relaying Bloomberg)
• Times of AI: DeepSeek Nears an 80B-Yuan Round and Moonshot Closes at ~$50B