Sharpa Raises $670 Million to Build Dexterous Robot Hands

AI robotics startup Sharpa has raised more than 4.5 billion yuan, about $670 million, in a first publicly disclosed financing round, backed by some of China's biggest technology companies. The round, announced on August 28, values the Shanghai-based startup at a reported 22 billion yuan post-money and puts fresh capital behind the race to build robots capable of dexterous manipulation.

Big Tech Backing

Investors include Alibaba, Meituan, Tencent, JD.com, and Transsion, alongside venture firms HongShan, Qiming Venture Partners, Meituan DragonBall Capital, and Luminous Ventures. The breadth of strategic support signals that e-commerce and logistics giants see dexterous hands as the key to moving humanoid robots from demonstration floors into warehouses and delivery networks.

A Surging Category

Sharpa's fundraising comes as China's dexterous-hand market accelerates. Industry estimates put cumulative funding in the domestic sector at more than 8 billion yuan by the end of July 2026, up from about 500 million yuan a year earlier. Dexterous hands are widely considered one of the hardest problems in embodied AI because they require fine-grained control, tactile sensing, and real-time learning in unstructured environments.

What the Capital Funds

The company will use the proceeds to scale production of its dexterous hand platforms, expand training data collection, and push its manipulation models toward commercial deployment. Chinese humanoid startups have been raising at record valuations through 2026, and Sharpa's round adds to a wave of capital flowing into the components, actuators, and hands that make humanoids useful beyond scripted tasks.