One of the fastest growing companies in the global robotic and digital surgery space, Ronovo Surgical, recently raised new financing to accelerate its vision of broad, cross-specialty adoption of robotic-assisted surgery.
The latest round of financing arms Ronovo with more than $50 million raised since 2020. Led by LongRiver Investments (LRI), this round garnered continued support from existing investors – Lilly Asia Ventures, Vivo Capital, Matrix Partners China and GGV Capital – with CEC Capital acting as exclusive financial advisor.
Exiting stealth mode, Ronovo unveils its inaugural robotic platform – Carina, an innovative modular system built on proprietary technology to enable configurable robotic assistance for laparoscopic surgeries across multiple specialties.
This round of oversubscribed financing will accelerate the multi-discipline clinical trial for Carina, strengthen R&D and clinical applications development, and further bolster the company’s deeply experienced talent base.
Developed in collaboration with renowned Chinese laparoscopic surgeons, Carina addresses numerous pain points in minimally invasive surgeries (MIS) with a modular and nimble robotic solution.
The system provides surgeons flexibility to choose the best instruments and the most ideal anatomical access based on laparoscopy foundation.
In this way, surgeons can leverage – rather than abandon – prior laparoscopic training and continue to improve upon their surgical performance, allowing for MIS in more surgical specialties to be performed robotically.
The innovative modular architecture of Carina minimizes equipment footprint to maximize utilization of precious OR space, thus becoming much more adaptable to typical OR environments in China.
The surgical team can choose between 3-module or 4-module configuration depending on the expected complexity of the procedure, and the individual modules are freely mobile to join others as needed in different ORs.
Surgeons can also choose from a full suite of instruments to arm each module. Ultimately, the fluidity in configuration translates to balancing clinical capability and procedural cost, resulting in improved usability for the surgical team, higher utilization for the hospital, and reduced economic burden on the patient.
Altogether, the differentiated clinical capabilities and economic viability of the Carina system are poised to rapidly accelerate the adoption of robotic MIS in general surgery, gynecology, thoracic surgery, urology and other specialties.
These specialties currently see nearly 10 million MIS patients annually in China, with 120,000 laparoscopic surgeons in over 10,000 hospitals.
Dr John Ma, founder, chairman and CEO of Ronovo, says: “We are extremely grateful to our investors for their confidence in Ronovo’s strategy to democratize robotic surgery.
“From inception, we have stayed true to our belief that innovation must start from an original pursuit to solve actual unmet clinical needs.”
Dr Ying Mao, co-founder and CTO of Ronovo, says: “Carina is designed with modular architecture to overcome the limited adoption of robotic MIS beyond urology.
“Thanks to the ingenuity and expertise of our talented team, we have achieved breakthrough in our core robotic technology for the Carina platform.”
Jiang Zhang, founder and CEO of LRI, says: “We are proud to have led this round of financing in Ronovo and its innovative modular robotic platform, which will be first-to-market in China.
“We are incredibly excited to partner with Ronovo to accelerate their product and clinical development, and we strongly believe in the clinical and commercial value of a modular robotic system as well as its viability for international adoption.”
While Carina was developed with Chinese laparoscopic surgeons as the use case, early discussions with robotic surgery KOLs in US and Europe indicate the system’s strong potential to overcome current barriers of broad robot-assisted surgery adoptions in many international markets.
Ronovo plans to continue discussions with clinical KOLs, strategic partners and global investors at upcoming conferences worldwide, including the LSI Emerging Medtech Summit, MedTech Strategist Innovation Summit, and Society of Robotic & Digital Surgery.
