Sharpa: Robotics' Most Mysterious Company Steps Out of the Shadows

Robotics' most mysterious company is stepping into the light. Ask who was the most talked-about and enigmatic company in embodied intelligence in 2025, and plenty of people in the field would name Singapore startup Sharpa. In May 2025, a dexterous hand Sharpa showed at the ICRA industry conference grabbed the attention of the entire industry.

The hand can perform delicate operations, such as peeling eggshells and using scissors, almost like a human hand. It matches a human hand at a 1:1 scale, and each fingertip carries 1,000 tactile sensors. At the time, one of the leading investors in embodied intelligence shared his take on the company: "The product is stunning.

I reached out to them back in August, but they dodged me. I still don't know who's in charge there." Another investor backed this up: "I heard you could reach Sharpa through the head of investment and financing at Hesai Technology.

I offered to discuss investing in Sharpa, but I was turned down." Investors aren't the only ones struggling to work with the company. Many specialists in embodied intelligence say they are interested in the Sharpa Wave, which costs around $50,000, but buying one isn't easy.

The founder of a company that develops embodied intelligence models also said that in-house algorithm R&D has to be tied to hardware, and that Sharpa makes the best dexterous-hand hardware available. But when he contacted the company in late 2025, he was told there was no stock available and that his only option was to travel to Shanghai to experiment with the dexterous hands at Sharpa. At the recently concluded CES 2026, Sharpa, founded about a year ago, debuted its Sharpa North robot for the first time.

The robot uses Sharpa's in-house dexterous hand and offers not only nimble hand movements but also autonomous decision-making. It can play ping-pong with people on the spot, fold pinwheels, and precisely press the shutter button and pull the lever when taking photos with a Polaroid. Prominent AI investor Fu Sheng called it "the robot that performs the hardest tasks."

Speculation about Sharpa's origins never stopped, but the mystery was only recently solved: according to a LatePost report, Sharpa's co-founders are Hesai Technology CEO Li Yifan, CTO Xiang Shaoqing, and chief scientist Sun Kai. According to its official website, Hesai Technology currently ranks number one in the world by market share in automotive lidar. The company's name reportedly comes from San Jose in Silicon Valley, the starting point of the three founders' study and entrepreneurship journey in the United States.

Sharpa was registered in Singapore, which may reflect a desire for a more neutral position in the international market, given the difficulties Hesai Technology has faced in the US. In 2024, the US Department of Defense added Hesai Technology to its list of "Chinese military companies," sending its share price tumbling. Despite repeated attempts, the issue was not resolved.

Hesai Technology filed a lawsuit but lost the case in the US District Court for the District of Columbia in July 2025. Setting up Sharpa in Singapore may be a strategic move to get around these restrictions and continue expanding globally.