When prominent investor Zhu Xiaohu exited humanoid-robot projects in bulk and turned to Harbin-Engineering-line Shanghai Hang Intelligent, deep-sea robotics returned to the venture spotlight. But another Harbin-Engineering-line dark horse, DeepOcean Intelligence, has carved a faster commercial path in industrial deep sea through hard tech and delivery.
As the cradle of China’s marine-equipment talent, Harbin Engineering University bred many top marine engineers and several domestically pioneered marine systems. Ma Yiming, founder of DeepOcean Intelligence, is a top graduate of HIT’s naval-architecture and ocean-engineering line.
Ma was the first Chinese engineer at SMD, the world’s second-largest deep-sea robot supplier (since acquired by CRRC’s Zhuzhou Times Electric), and the first in China to systematically import European and US core deep-sea-robot technology. Over his career he led or joined several world-class marine-robot projects, including the world’s first commercial deep-sea mining robot “Nautilus” and China’s first heavy-duty seabed operation robot.
Under Ma, DeepOcean Intelligence began operating in 2023, deepening underwater robotics and marine smart equipment.
On 13 August, DeepOcean Intelligence announced an over-RMB 500 million Series A. The investor line-up is stellar, spanning top market funds and multiple state-owned forces: Photosynthesis Ventures, Fortune VC, GGV Capital, Addor Capital, Cathay Capital-managed Total Energies fund, China Insurance Investment and CETC Capital, while old backers Zhengxuan Investment, Yunze Capital, Yunshi Capital and Gaojie Capital made large proportional follow-ons. Earlier rounds drew Guangzhou Finance Holdings, Shenzhen Hi-Tech Investment and Kejin Holdings; notably, BYD is also on the shareholder list.
Since founding, DeepOcean Intelligence has targeted must-have industrial scenes: offshore oil and gas, subsea communications, offshore wind and deep-sea mining, while pressing on underwater embodied intelligence and multi-robot swarm coordination.
On products, it built two lines, suspended light underwater robots and heavy-duty seabed operation robots, with next-generation work-class ROVs, subsea cable-burying robots and general marine robots. These include “Singularity”, a 6,000-metre work-class robot; the work-class deep-sea robot; the suspended “Phoenix” cable-burying robot; “Taurus”, Asia’s most powerful cable-burying robot; the “Auriga” seabed heavy-duty operation robot; plus “Pisces” ballast-tank inspection, “Scorpio” hull-cleaning, and “Sagittarius” deck-inspection robots, a complete and broad system.
On software, DeepOcean Intelligence released “Haiwei I”, the first marine general-robot main controller, and in May 2026 launched SEAgent, the world’s first deep-sea-robot task-decision foundation model.
Its software-hardware moat rests on a full engineering system spanning mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, control and intelligent systems. The company leads in intellectual-property reserves in China’s deep-sea equipment field, with over 500 IP items, industry certifications and standards, over 30 per cent high-value invention patents, and more than 400 industry standards and operating norms covering all scenarios.
With fully autonomous heavy-duty deep-sea tech, in under three years DeepOcean Intelligence covered almost all of China’s offshore-wind seabed-operation robot supply over the past one to two years, and became the first Chinese company to commercially export deep-sea robots, breaking long Western monopoly.
In 2025 it won major overseas orders. With a global subsea-cable contractor under the UAE telecom group it signed a nearly USD 10 million order, breaking China’s zero-export record; the robot finished full installation and sea trials in May. Months later it took a major RMB 130 million “Phoenix-600” 3,000-metre suspended cable-burying robot order.
Investment data shows that by July this year new robot-unit sales contracts reached several hundred million yuan, with several-hundred-million-yuan orders locked for signing in the next two months and about RMB 1 billion of potential orders in deep talks.
Its business now covers Britain, Egypt, the UAE and Australia across dozens of countries, penetrating high-barrier mainstream fields of global oil and gas, subsea communications and offshore wind.
This year DeepOcean Intelligence launched “DeepMatrix”, aiming for the world’s first fully autonomous seabed-robot swarm business. The core is to deploy intelligent robots on the seabed long-term, for all-weather autonomous operation, reshaping the deep-sea work paradigm.
This shift is no accident but the inevitable result of stacked technology, policy and market dividends. Per QYResearch, the 2025 global tethered-ROV market was about USD 2.132 billion, projected to USD 3.143 billion by 2032, a 5.7 per cent compound rate. Deep-sea robotics is entering a golden age for domestic players.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek Robot report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.