DeepSeek reportedly to lead seed round for robotics startup Winverse AI

Multiple posts on X, citing Bloomberg, report that Chinese AI lab DeepSeek plans to lead a seed round of tens of millions of dollars for Winverse AI, a months-old Hangzhou robotics startup founded by former Tencent scientist Hu Han. The reports value the startup at about $400 million post-money, with Meituan's Long-Z also participating. The deal is not final, according to the posts. One post notes that DeepSeek is deploying capital from its own $12 billion-plus financing to bankroll the startup, and another mentions that DeepSeek previously took a stake in Unitree. The reports describe Winverse as building AI for robots, with one post characterizing DeepSeek's move as investing in embodied AI. The founder, Hu Han, is described as a former Tencent top AI scientist with a PhD from Tsinghua, having worked at Microsoft Research Asia and Baidu, and the company is still in stealth. The posts attribute these details to Bloomberg, and the reports are not independently confirmed.