Speech by Minister of State Alvin Tan at Sharpa Physical AI Summit

Introduction 

1.             Good afternoon. Congratulations to the Sharpa team on your new Global HQ. This is a significant milestone for both Sharpa and the Embodied Artificial Intelligence (AI) ecosystem in Singapore. 

“Manufacture Time by Making Robots Useful” 

2.             During my preparations for this event, I came across Sharpa’s mission statement – “Manufacture Time by Making Robots Useful.” It is a clever idea. In Singapore, time is our most precious resource. As a small and resource-constrained island with a lack of land and people, we often feel that time is not on our side. 

3.             But Sharpa's mission suggests that the power to create more time is actually in our hands. By making robots truly useful, we put time back into our own hands. When robots take over repetitive or physically demanding work, we are free to do other things. We can focus on innovation, creative problem solving, more meaningful roles, and spend more time with our loved ones. We are in fact, using technology as a tool to, as Sharpa says, “manufacture time” and putting it back into our hands.  

Bridging the Last Millimetre 

4.             Speaking of hands, I understand that’s an obsession here at Sharpa, and so have great inventors and artists in history. Before he was a painter, Leonardo da Vinci was a student of anatomy. He filled his notebooks with detailed drawings of the bones, tendons, and muscles of the hand. He understood that the hand is the primary way we interact with our world.

5.             This same fascination with the hand is found in the work of another great artist, Michelangelo. In the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s famous painting, The Creation of Adam, shows man reaching out to the hand of God. 

6.             There is a tiny, almost invisible gap between their fingers. In the world of robotics, we call that the “last millimetre” problem. This "last millimetre" is the hardest part of any task. It is the tiny, high-precision segment where robots usually fall short, such as inserting a peg into a tight hole or aligning a screwdriver. 

7.             While automation often fails in these scenarios, Sharpa’s technology seeks to bridge that gap and finish the job. We have all heard of the “Hand of God” in football. Today, Sharpa is working on what I might call the “Hand of Tech.” But unlike Maradona’s famous goal, there is no mystery or trickery here. It is built on pure precision and advanced sensing. 

a.    The Sharpa Wave robotic hand is designed to match the scale of a human hand with 22 active degrees of freedom and more than 1,000 sensors on its fingertips. It can pick up small objects, assemble electronics, and even crack an egg. 

b.    The Sharpa North is a humanoid robot that can operate independently. With a 0.02 second response time, it could even give a professional table tennis player a very tough time. It demonstrated that in CES 2026! 

Working Hand-in-Hand 

8.              As we continue investing in R&D, we must ensure research turns into real-world application. This requires us to work hand-in-hand across the public and private sectors. Glad to share Sharpa will be signing several MOUs today with partners such as JTC, A*STAR, and Grab. 

9.              These partnerships cover R&D as well as robot testing and assurance. One project with A*STAR will co-develop robotic capabilities for container handling at the port. This gives us a glimpse of what “Productivity for Tomorrow” might look like, where our ports are integrated with robotic systems that can perform complex tasks with a steady hand. These are good examples of Embodied AI. Robots that can increasingly sense, think, and respond to dynamic environments. 

10.          Earlier this year, we announced that Singapore will invest in Embodied AI R&D to address complex problems in sectors like advanced manufacturing, aviation, and the maritime industry. 

Placing the Future in the Right Hands 

11.          To sustain this, we must also place the future of this industry in the hands of the right talent. Through existing schemes like Singapore Economic Development Board’s (EDB) Industrial Postgraduate Programme, we will continue to support more companies and talents to build a steady pool of people ready for this technological wave. 

12.          Over the next three years, Sharpa is expected to grow to around 150 employees in Singapore. About 75% of these will be high-value R&D roles. 

13.          I studied the Sharpa website last night and saw that they are already hiring. There are currently eight open roles for experienced AI engineers and one for a fresh graduate. These are exactly the high-quality jobs we want to create here as we build meaningful opportunities for our people. 

Conclusion 

14.          Leonardo da Vinci once described the human hand as a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. Today, we are here to celebrate a company that is bringing that masterpiece into the digital age. Together, we are laying the foundations for the next frontier of robotics. Congratulations again to Team Sharpa! 

15.          I wish everyone a fruitful day ahead. Thank you.