When insiders in the embodied intelligence scene discuss the most talked-about yet elusive startup of 2025, many point to Singapore-based Sharpa.
At the ICRA robotics conference in May last year, Sharpa’s demo drew crowds. A human-sized dexterous hand peeled eggs, cut with scissors, and executed delicate movements with lifelike precision. Each fingertip housed roughly 1,000 tactile sensors.
“The product was jaw-dropping,” one investor told 36Kr. “I reached out as early as August, but they weren’t keen to meet. To this day, I don’t even know who’s in charge.” Another investor described a similar experience. “I heard you could reach them through someone in Hesai Technology’s investment team, but when I asked to discuss Sharpa’s fundraising, I was turned down.”
That sense of mystery extends beyond investors. Several robotics entrepreneurs said they were eager to buy the SharpaWave, a dexterous hand priced at around USD 50,000, only to find it nearly impossible to obtain. One founder exploring embodied intelligence described Sharpa’s hardware as “the best dexterous hand on the market,” but said the company was out of stock during outreach in late 2025. Instead, the founder was invited to test the hardware at Sharpa’s Shanghai office.
Sharpa made its first major public debut at CES 2026. Barely a year old, the company unveiled Sharpa North, a humanoid robot equipped with its in-house dexterous hands and a self-learning control system. On stage, the robot played table tennis, folded pinwheels, and snapped photos with apparent precision using a camera.
Speculation about who was behind Sharpa had circulated for months. The answer emerged recently. According to LatePost, the company was founded by David Li, Xiang Shaoqing, and Sun Kai, the CEO, CTO, and chief scientist of Hesai Technology, respectively.
Hesai’s website describes it as the world’s largest supplier of automotive LiDAR, short for light detection and ranging. The company’s name is said to derive from “San Jose” in Silicon Valley, where the three founders studied and began their entrepreneurial careers. Hesai is a familiar name across both the autonomous driving and robotics sectors.
Xiaomi selected Hesai as the LiDAR supplier for its first car. In its 2020 IPO prospectus, Hesai said it was already shipping LiDAR units for robotics applications, including unmanned delivery and cleaning. Today, embodied intelligence companies such as Unitree Robotics and Vbot use Hesai sensors in their robots.
Robotics has also become part of Hesai’s stock market narrative. After listing in Hong Kong in September 2025, in addition to its existing US listing, Hesai’s share price initially fell before rebounding following a strong third-quarter earnings report. The company said it had met its annual profit target ahead of schedule, delivering more than 60,000 LiDAR units for robotics, an increase of over 1,300% year-on-year. CFO Andrew Fan attributed the performance to rising demand from assisted driving and robotics customers.
In the same report, Li pointed to longer-term ambitions:
“Looking ahead to the next decade, the company will actively transform… to create a new era of perception and interaction between cars and robots.”
Sharpa’s founding suggests Li and his co-founders were not content to remain component suppliers. Their backgrounds help explain that shift. Li studied robotics at Tsinghua University and earned a PhD in motion control from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sun holds a PhD in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. Xiang, also a Tsinghua alumnus, earned dual master’s degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering from Stanford and previously worked as an iPhone systems integration engineer.
From robotics research and mechanical design to real-world deployment, the trio has spent years bridging academic work and industrial engineering.
They are not alone in crossing over. Teams from the autonomous driving sector have increasingly moved into embodied intelligence, spawning startups such as Tars, founded by former Huawei scientist Chen Yilun. The company reportedly raised RMB 1.7 billion (USD 238 million) in its angel funding round.
“The common thread between automotive LiDAR and embodied intelligence is spatial perception,” said one financial adviser in the field. That overlap, he said, is why many investors suspect a close link between Sharpa and Hesai.
Sharpa is headquartered in Singapore and operates an office in Shanghai, Hesai’s home base. The setup allows it to manage global partnerships while remaining close to China’s manufacturing and supply chain ecosystem.
But one question lingers: why incorporate in Singapore and operate with such limited visibility?
The answer may trace back to a turning point in Hesai’s international expansion. Before and after its US listing in 2023, Li said in interviews that Hesai positioned itself as a global company, with the US accounting for a significant share of its business, a profile that appealed to overseas investors.
That narrative shifted in January 2024, when the US Department of Defense added Hesai to its list of “Chinese military companies,” triggering a selloff in its shares. Hesai filed a lawsuit challenging the designation but lost the case in the US District Court for the District of Columbia in July 2025. The issue has remained unresolved since.
KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Fu Chong for 36Kr.