DeepSeek Eyes $400M Robotics AI Startup in New Funding Push

DeepSeek is looking beyond chatbots and toward robots, with plans to lead a funding round for a young Chinese AI startup reportedly valued at $400 million.

The Chinese AI lab has agreed to lead a seed investment in Winverse AI, a startup developing technology for robots, according to Bloomberg. The round is expected to raise tens of millions of dollars and would value Winverse at approximately $400 million after the investment.

Meituan’s Long-Z Investments is among the other investors that have committed to the round. However, the deal has not been finalized, and both the valuation and investor participation could change, Bloomberg reported.

Winverse was founded in 2026 by Hu Han, a former Tencent scientist who led the company’s vision-language and embodied AI foundation model teams. Hu previously worked at Microsoft Research Asia and Baidu, according to Bloomberg.

From chatbots to machines that can act

The potential investment would extend DeepSeek’s robotics ambitions beyond its existing relationship with Unitree Robotics. DeepSeek acquired a roughly 2% stake in the humanoid robot maker ahead of its Shanghai listing in August and plans to collaborate with the company on embodied-intelligence models.

The move comes as DeepSeek approaches a financing round of at least 80 billion yuan ($12 billion), primarily intended to fund AI model training and data centers. The additional capital could also help the company support startups working on technologies it wants to develop jointly.

China has established a strong position in humanoid robot manufacturing, but building capable machines requires more than advanced hardware. Robots must interpret instructions, understand their surroundings and execute tasks reliably in changing physical environments.

That challenge has also attracted major investment in the United States. Skild AI and Physical Intelligence, which develop general-purpose AI for robots, have reached reported valuations of $14 billion and $5.6 billion, respectively, per Bloomberg.

However, Winverse's precise technology remains unclear. The startup is operating in stealth, and no detailed product plans or technical architecture have been publicly disclosed. BigGo Finance reported that some industry insiders view its focus as closer to underlying infrastructure and model acceleration than embodied AI in its strictest sense.

What this could mean for businesses and users

For manufacturers, more capable robot AI could eventually make automation useful for tasks that remain difficult to program, particularly work that requires interpreting instructions or responding to changing conditions. If the technology matures, businesses could have more options for automating factory operations beyond repetitive, tightly controlled movements.

However, Winverse has not publicly disclosed detailed product plans, making it too early to determine how its technology might be used commercially.

For DeepSeek, the reported investment points to a broader opportunity beyond chatbots and conventional AI assistants: developing systems that can connect AI models with physical-world applications. Backing a specialized startup could give the company access to expertise and new development opportunities without building every robotics capability internally.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on our sister publication, TechRepublic.