DeepSeek invests $20.8 million in Unitree Shanghai IPO and forms embodied AI partnership

DeepSeek invested 140.8 million yuan ($20.8 million) for a 2.31% strategic placement stake in robot maker Unitree’s Shanghai IPO. The companies agreed to jointly develop AI models for humanoid robots, combining DeepSeek’s model expertise with Unitree’s mechanical engineering, motion control, and embodied intelligence. Unitree will prefer DeepSeek for model-training services; DeepSeek will prefer Unitree for robots and embodied-AI applications. The partnership targets the bottleneck of building robot ‘brains’ capable of understanding novel environments and converting instructions into physical actions.