DeepSeek to lead seed round for robot-brain startup Winverse AI at $400M valuation

The AI lab's first major startup bet on embodied AI backs a months-old Hangzhou company founded by former Tencent scientist Hu Han.

DeepSeek has agreed to lead a seed financing round worth tens of millions of dollars for Winverse AI, a startup building artificial intelligence systems that let robots perceive, understand and act in the physical world. The round would value the months-old company at about $400 million after the investment, with Meituan's venture arm Long-Z Capital among the other committed backers. The deal has not closed, and the valuation and investor list could still change.

Winverse was founded in 2026 by Hu Han and remains in stealth, with no product or technical architecture publicly disclosed. Hu previously served as a Tencent Distinguished Scientist leading the company's vision-language and embodied foundation-model teams, after stints at Microsoft Research Asia and Baidu, and holds a PhD from Tsinghua University. His research credits include co-authoring the Swin Transformer, which won best paper at ICCV 2021.

If completed, the investment would rank among DeepSeek's largest startup bets since its 2023 founding — and its clearest move yet into embodied AI. The lab already holds a stake in Unitree Robotics from the humanoid maker's Shanghai listing, part of a stated effort to co-develop embodied intelligence models with the robot company.

The thesis is becoming legible across the frontier labs: the binding constraint on humanoids is no longer the mechanical body but the brain — models that turn perception and language into reliable physical action. A stealth company drawing a $400 million valuation on its first outside round shows how scarce the talent perceived to bridge large models and real-world control has become.

Neither DeepSeek, Winverse nor Long-Z has publicly confirmed the transaction, and the terms remain subject to change before any closing.