When notable investor Zhu Xiaohu stepped back from humanoid bets and turned to Harbin Engineering-linked Shihang, the deep-sea robot track drew fresh attention. A different Harbin Engineering spinout, DeepSea Intelligence, is taking the industrial deep-sea route, and it is moving to commercial scale faster.
A RMB 500 million vote
On 13 August, DeepSea Intelligence announced a Series A above RMB 500 million, with a book mixing top private funds and state capital: GGV, Cathay through its Total Energy vehicle, CETC, and others, plus returning backers. BYD is already on the cap table, and earlier rounds drew Guangzhou state funds and Shenzhen state-backed investors. The founder, Ma Yiming, was the first Chinese engineer at SMD, the world’s second-largest deep-sea robot maker, later acquired by CRRC.
What it builds
The firm builds light suspended underwater robots and heavy seabed work robots. Its products include the Singularity, a 6,000-metre work-class unit, cable-burial robots such as the Phoenix and Taurus, the last billed as Asia’s largest power cable burial robot, the Auriga heavy seabed unit, plus inspection robots for ballast tanks and hulls. In May 2026 it released SEAgent, which it calls the world’s first deep-sea robot task-decision model.
From zero export to global orders
DeepSea Intelligence took China’s first commercial deep-sea robot export, a near USD 10 million cable order from a unit of an Emirates telecom group, breaking a zero-export record, and then a RMB 130 million order for the Phoenix 600, a 3,000-metre suspended cable-burial robot. Its business now reaches Britain, Egypt, the UAE and Australia across offshore oil and gas, subsea communications and wind power.
With full-stack command of mechanics, electrics, hydraulics, control and intelligent systems, the firm holds more than 500 intellectual property assets, over 30 per cent high-value invention patents, and 400-plus industry standards. Its DeepMatrix plan aims for the world’s first fully autonomous seabed robot cluster, a shift driven by a triple dividend of technology, policy and market.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.
Translated and adapted from OFweek (https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-08/ART-8321204-8120-30698415.html).