Artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek is putting its money where the metal is, dropping $20.8 million into robot maker Unitree’s landmark Shanghai public offering, according to a stock-exchange filing reported by Reuters.
The investment gives DeepSeek 933,399 Unitree shares, equal to 2.31% of the shares allocated through the IPO’s strategic placement.
The two Hangzhou-based companies also agreed to jointly develop AI models for humanoid robots.
The deal links DeepSeek’s strength in AI models with Unitree’s expertise in mechanical engineering, motion control and embodied intelligence. Under the agreement, Unitree will give preference to DeepSeek for model-training services and technical solutions, while DeepSeek will favor Unitree when buying robots or pursuing embodied-AI applications, according to Reuters.
Unitree priced its Shanghai IPO at 150.80 yuan per share and plans to raise about 6.1 billion yuan, according to Unite.AI. The company is set to become the first mainland-listed Chinese maker of humanoid robots, the publication reported.
Building a robot that can think
The partnership tackles a major problem in humanoid robotics: getting machines to reliably understand unfamiliar environments and turn instructions into physical actions.
Chinese robot makers have made rapid progress on hardware, producing machines that can walk, run and perform choreographed movements. But autonomous work requires a different kind of intelligence.
Robots need training data from the physical world, such as how to pick up objects, open doors, respond to changing surroundings and recover from mistakes. Developers have established facilities where humans repeatedly guide robots through such tasks to generate that data.
DeepSeek brings a different asset. Its models have gained attention for coding, math, and reasoning performance while competing aggressively on price. But its strongest work has largely centered on language models rather than integrated vision-and-language systems needed for autonomous robots.
The company has released separate vision-language research, including VL2, but those capabilities have not been incorporated into its flagship commercial model, Reuters reported.
A strategic shift for DeepSeek
The Unitree investment could give DeepSeek something its existing AI business lacks: a direct path into physical-world AI.
Humanoid robots could become an important testing ground for the next generation of AI models. A model that performs well on text and reasoning benchmarks still has to deal with imperfect sensors, moving objects, and unpredictable environments when placed inside a robot.
For DeepSeek, access to Unitree hardware and the physical-world data generated by those machines could help close that gap. For Unitree, closer access to an AI model developer could help turn capable hardware into robots that can operate with less human intervention.
The challenge is that physical AI is substantially harder than software alone.
Collecting useful training data is expensive and slow, while failures in the physical world can damage equipment or create safety problems. DeepSeek is therefore not simply buying an equity stake; it is committing to a hardware-software relationship in a field where technical progress remains uncertain.
Also read: Google’s Gemini Robotics 2 can now control humanoid robots from feet to fingertips, including walking, crouching, and handling objects.