Sharpa, an artificial intelligence (AI) robotics startup led by the founders of publicly listed 3D LiDAR company Hesai Technology, has raised over 4.5 billion yuan (about $669 million) from a star-studded investor group as it unveils a fully automated robot restaurant in China in partnership with CFB Group’s ice cream franchise Dairy Queen (DQ).
Founded in 2024 by Nasdaq- and Hong Kong-listed Hesai’s three co-founders—CEO David Li, CTO Xiang Shaoqing, and chief scientist Sun Kai—Sharpa said that it secured the big-ticket financing from industry giants including Alibaba Group, Meituan, Tencent Holdings, JD.com, and Transsion Holdings.
Institutional investors, such as HongShan, Qiming Venture Partners, Luminous Ventures, and Meituan’s corporate venture capital (CVC) arm Long-Z Investments, also invested, the startup disclosed in a WeChat post.
Sharpa announced this funding deal, reportedly valuing it at 22 billion yuan ($3.3 billion) post-money, one day before the official launch of a “zero-modification, fully automated, and all-year-round” Dairy Queen robot restaurant, powered by its humanoid robots, on Wujiang Road in Shanghai’s Jing’an District on Saturday (August 29).
The startup said in the post that the launch of this flagship restaurant marks the first time humanoid robots have operated fully autonomously in a real-world, commercial food-and-beverage environment. Operating daily from 10:00 am-10:00 pm, the Sharpa robots deployed at this restaurant execute a complex, 55-step process to make DQ’s signature Blizzard ice cream—from order receipt to preparation, handoff, and the iconic upside-down service trick—using DQ’s standard, off-the-shelf commercial equipment and tools without requiring any modifications to the store.
“The key to robotics commercialisation is not performing a single task once, but consistently executing complex tasks in an unmodified real-world environment over the long term,” said co-founder Li. “Sherpa has taken the route by starting with a real, operating robot restaurant to validate the probability of commercialising general-purpose humanoid robots.”
Proceeds will enable the startup to accelerate core tech R&D, attract top talent, and drive its general-purpose robots from technical validation to real-world application, according to the post.
Headquartered in Singapore, Sharpa focuses on building ultra-high-performance robots and core components for future general-purpose robotic applications. While its products currently serve OEM (original equipment manufacturer) robotics companies, research institutions, and F&B clients, it aims to expand into additional application domains, eventually providing household robots to help free up human time.
The startup has a business operations centre in California, the US and a manufacturing R&D centre in Shanghai, China.
Prior to founding Sharpa, the co-founding trio—Li, Xiang, and Sun—built Hesai in 2014.
They secured over $500 million in private funding for Hesai from prominent investors including Xiaomi, Meituan, Bosch, and Baidu, before taking the company public on Nasdaq with a $190 million IPO in early 2023. Hesai subsequently completed its dual-listing debut in Hong Kong in September 2025, raising $531 million.
