Pioneering software, sensors and services company Sharper Shape announces the appointment of Chris Beaufait as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective 19 October 2020.

Beaufait takes over the position from Ilkka Hiidenheimo, who has served as President and CEO since early 2017, as Sharper Shape - market leader in delivering transformative inspection solutions for the utility industry - readies itself for a bold step in its growth journey.

Beaufait is a proven business leader with extensive global experience and joins Sharper Shape from Sarcos Robotics where he was the Chief Operating Officer and led the company's commercialization and development efforts for powered exoskeletons and teleoperated inspection robots. Chris brings over two decades of experience in customer and technology focused infrastructure and service businesses and will use his deep knowledge and understanding of identifying customer pain points to propel the company from start-up to scale-up.

Beaufait said: "Sharper Shape's success to date is rooted in precisely understanding customer needs and developing solutions to meet those needs, critical to the growth of any business. Our holistic approach to aerial utility inspection is truly a market differentiator, delivering a systematic, end-to-end solution that avoids the need for utilities to change how they operate.

"Thus far, Sharper Shape has analysed a remarkable five petabytes of data for customers and I'm looking forward to building on Sharper Shape's success, focusing on growing customer trust and confidence in what we do and implementing the processes and institutional knowledge that can help us scale. This will enable us to deliver innovative solutions for utilities and wider energy sector players across the United States and beyond."

Hiidenheimo said: "We are delighted to welcome Chris to the helm of Sharper Shape. This is the right time to have a new CEO located in our biggest market. With his strong innovation track record, Chris is also perfectly positioned to be the driving force behind continued technology success. I will continue my involvement with Sharper Shape as a member of the Board of Directors and remain very optimistic about the future of this business."

Andrej Srsen, Sharpe Shape Chairman of the Board said: "In Chris we found a leader with a proven track record to execute and deliver for existing customers while scaling the business for the growing customer base in the US and also globally. This is needed to help utilities deal with aging infrastructure and environmental challenges such as wildfires today while developing products and technology to help utilities get in front of it tomorrow."