Hi, this is Evelyn, writing to you from Beijing. Welcome to the latest edition of The China Connection — a snapshot of what I’m seeing and hearing from local businesses.
Chinese robot companies still underpin many U.S. tech endeavors, especially when it comes to the pain point of robotic hands. Who is one of the latest on Nvidia’s radar?
In just a few months, Nvidia has showcased two humanoid robot training packages: one with mechanical hands from Sharpa, and another with hands from Wuji.
Both have ties to founders in Shanghai.
Pan Yunzhe founded Wuji in 2019, eventually moving much of the team to Shenzhen and drawing backers such as Ant Group, HSG and Future Capital, according to PitchBook. A demo video last week claimed a Wuji Hand 2 could autonomously spin a pen, despite interference.
The Wuji Hand 2 made it onto a slide Oct. 21 behind Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as he told a crowd in Berlin about a new humanoid hardware system for training the robots on Nvidia software. The robot body comes from Agile Robots, which has offices in Germany, China and the U.S.
“It will be the flywheel by which we can accelerate development of robotics,” Huang said of the hardware system, called Agile One SN. Agile Robots announced the system, which uses Nvidia’s Isaac robotics software and Jetson Thor computing platform.
Research institutions, such as Stanford and ETH Zurich, can likely start using the Agile One SN system in early 2027, according to Nvidia.
Stanford and ETH Zurich were also among the institutions Nvidia named in connection with its first reference humanoid design, announced May 31. That system uses a body from Chinese humanoid company Unitree and mechanical hands from Sharpa. It was scheduled for delivery from late 2026.
Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether deliveries had begun, or whether the researchers would try both reference robots, or just one.
Sharpa, headquartered in Singapore, was co-founded by David Li, CEO of Shanghai-based lidar company Hesai. Sharpa has said its manufacturing R&D is in Shanghai.
While these are just two of the many robotic hand makers in China — and globally — they’ve grown so much in prominence that Google DeepMind research lead Keerthana Gopalakrishnan directly compared the two startups in a podcast last month.
Sharpa Wave is a bit stronger than Wuji, which is closer in size to a typical human hand but has the strength of a ten-year-old, she said. It was not clear whether she was testing the Wuji Hand 2 or an earlier version.
In September, humanoid startup JoyIn’s Zhu Mingxuan told me she found Wuji’s mechanical hands very light and very good at completing tasks, but prone to heating up while doing so. She said Sharpa’s performed better, but were far more expensive.
Hardware is limiting humanoid development, and hands are the main challenge, she said. Zhu said she left U.S. humanoid company Figure last year, where she had also worked on models to help humanoid robots mimic human actions.
As China pushes its humanoid industry to develop more core technologies, mechanical hands are one way companies can try to stand out in the robot race.
Consumer electronics company Xiaomi said last week that, by testing its robotic hand in its car factory, it found that most of the tasks it tested required only a specific range of movement.
And in another sign of just how far along the tech may have come in China, Meta has worked with Chinese startup Fourier for a humanoid prototype, The Information reported Oct. 31, citing sources. Neither company immediately responded to a request for comment.
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