A small Shenzhen team is building a surgical robot that steers catheters and guidewires - so the surgeon's hands, and lungs, don't have to be in the X-ray beam.
In an interventional catheterization lab, the work is quiet and exacting. A physician threads a thin wire through the body's arteries, watching a live X-ray screen, nudging the catheter millimeter by millimeter toward a blockage. It is delicate work performed by human hands - hands that, over a career, absorb thousands of hours of radiation. Angio8, a medical-robotics company founded in 2021 and based in Shenzhen, China, is trying to change who does the steering.
The company - registered under the Chinese name 通甪科技 (Tonglu Technology) and known internationally as Angio8 - is developing a surgical robot and treatment platform for minimally invasive vascular interventional surgery. In plain terms: a machine that manipulates the catheters and guidewires used to open and repair blood vessels, operated by a physician who no longer has to stand directly over the patient under continuous imaging. It is one of the harder problems in medical technology, and Angio8 has been chasing it with a team of roughly four people.
Figures compiled from public company databases and Chinese startup press. Exact funding totals are not fully disclosed; some databases estimate cumulative funding near US$2.75M. Treat headcount and stage as approximate.
Vascular interventional surgery is one of modern medicine's great trade-offs. Procedures like angioplasty, stenting and embolization are minimally invasive - no large incision, faster recovery - but they depend on fluoroscopy, a continuous X-ray feed that lets the physician see the wire inside the body. The operator works right beside the patient, in a lead apron, for the length of the case. Do that for a career, and the cumulative radiation exposure and orthopedic strain add up.
Angio8's answer is to put a robot between the surgeon and the patient. Its system holds and drives the catheter and guidewire, translating a physician's inputs at a console into precise mechanical motion at the table. Crucially, the company builds force sensing into the design, so the operator retains a sense of the resistance the wire meets - the tactile cue that warns of a vessel wall before it is perforated.
That combination - remote operation plus haptic feedback - is the heart of the pitch. A robot can make micro-adjustments a tired hand cannot, and it can repeat a motion identically every time. For the patient, that promises consistency. For the physician, it promises distance from the radiation source without giving up control.
The platform is designed to slot into the existing catheterization lab rather than replace it, pairing the robotic hardware with the imaging and control environment already present. Angio8 engineers its software to IEC 62304, the international standard for medical-device software lifecycle - a signal that safety-critical discipline is baked in from the start rather than bolted on later.
"To save a patient's artery, the interventional surgeon has traditionally had to stand in the X-ray beam. Angio8's bet is that the best protective equipment is distance."
A simplified view of the robotic interventional workflow Angio8 is building toward.
The operator sits at a control station, away from the radiation source, watching the live image.
The robotic unit at the table advances, retracts and rotates the catheter and guidewire.
Sensors relay the resistance the wire meets, preserving the surgeon's tactile judgment.
Motions are fine, consistent and recordable - the same input yields the same result.
A robotic system for remote manipulation of catheters and guidewires during minimally invasive vascular procedures, with force sensing to preserve tactile feedback and improve precision.
An integrated hardware-and-software environment that pairs the robot with the cath lab's imaging and control setup, engineered to the IEC 62304 medical-software standard.
Angio8's customers are hospitals and the interventional cardiology, radiology and vascular surgery teams inside them. As an early-stage company still moving toward clinical validation, its footprint today is pre-commercial - this is capital equipment sold into operating rooms, a market where adoption follows regulatory clearance, clinical evidence and surgeon trust, in that order.
The company operates a business-to-business medical device model. Robotic systems like this typically follow a "razor and blades" economics: the capital equipment anchors the relationship, while recurring revenue comes from single-use disposables - catheters, guidewires and sterile components - plus service and support contracts. It is a slow, regulation-heavy path to revenue, and a defensible one once a device is embedded in a hospital's workflow.
Angio8 has raised across at least two rounds. Its 2023 Series A - reported at tens of millions of RMB - drew established medtech investors, and a follow-on round in 2025 was directed toward continued R&D and commercialization. Exact figures are not fully public; the bars below are indicative of round sequence, not precise amounts.
Investors and dates per Chinese startup press (36Kr, DoNews) and databases (Tracxn, CB Insights, PitchBook). Amounts marked undisclosed where not publicly confirmed.
Angio8 is led by co-founder and CEO Yunfei Cao, who goes by Richard. He studied biomedical engineering at the State University of New York at Stony Brook before building the company in Shenzhen - a background that bridges international biomedical training and China's dense hardware-manufacturing ecosystem.
That geography is not incidental. Shenzhen gives a small team access to the electronics, prototyping and supply chain a device like this demands, while the founder's US training connects the work to global standards and clinical expectations. The team itself spans hardware, medical electronics, embedded software and AI - a deliberately engineering-heavy roster for a deliberately engineering-heavy problem.
Angio8 is not alone. Endovascular robotics is a crowded, ambitious field that includes Corindus (now part of Siemens Healthineers), France's Robocath, Beijing Wemed, and a wave of other Chinese startups such as Agilis Robotics and Ronovo Surgical. The default alternative - manual, hands-on catheter work - remains the standard of care almost everywhere.
Where Angio8 tries to distinguish itself is on the unglamorous fundamentals that decide whether an interventional robot ever leaves the lab: size that fits a real operating room, sterilization that fits a real workflow, installation that a hospital can actually manage, and force feedback precise enough to keep a guidewire from doing harm. In this market, workflow is the feature, and the details a patient never sees are the ones that matter most.
"The best medical devices disappear into the workflow. The goal isn't a robot that impresses at a trade show - it's one a busy surgeon forgets is even there."
Minimally invasive surgery made procedures smaller. Robotics is trying to make them repeatable. Angio8 sits exactly at that seam. The larger promise of endovascular robotics is access: if a robot can standardize how a vascular intervention is performed, the same quality of care could reach a county hospital that reaches a flagship one - and specialist expertise could, in principle, be delivered from a distance.
Angio8 is an early entrant, not a market leader - a four-person company competing against far larger firms. But focus can be a moat. The interesting question in Chinese medical robotics is not whether robots enter the cath lab; it is who makes them reliable and affordable enough to reach every hospital that needs one.
Richard Cao co-founds Angio8 (通甪科技) to develop robotic systems for minimally invasive vascular intervention.
The team builds out its vascular interventional surgical robot and integrated treatment platform, engineering to medical safety standards.
Angio8 raises tens of millions RMB from Oriental Fortune Capital, Kangyu Capital and Ruiqian Capital to accelerate R&D and pursue clinical trials.
A further round supports continued technology development and steps toward commercialization.
"Angio8" nods to angiography - the vessel imaging at the core of every interventional case.
Its Chinese name, 通甪 (Tonglu), plays on the idea of opening a route - fitting for a company that navigates blood vessels.
Founder Richard Cao trained in biomedical engineering at Stony Brook before building the company in China.
Angio8 has taken on one of medtech's toughest problems with a roster of roughly four people.
Angio8 develops a surgical robot and treatment platform for minimally invasive vascular interventional procedures, letting physicians remotely control catheters and guidewires with force feedback.
It was co-founded in 2021 by Yunfei (Richard) Cao, who serves as CEO. The company is headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, and also operates under the name 通甪科技 (Tonglu Technology).
Angio8 closed a Series A of tens of millions RMB in 2023 (Oriental Fortune Capital, Kangyu Capital, Ruiqian Capital) and completed a further round in 2025. Exact totals are not fully public; some databases list cumulative funding around US$2.75M.
Instead of the surgeon manually pushing catheters and guidewires under continuous X-ray, Angio8's robot performs the manipulation remotely, aiming for greater precision and repeatability and reduced radiation exposure for the operating team.
It competes with endovascular robotics players such as Corindus (Siemens Healthineers), Robocath, Beijing Wemed, Agilis Robotics and Ronovo Surgical, as well as conventional manual intervention.
Video: no official Angio8 YouTube interview or product-demo video was found in public sources at the time of writing. For general background on robotic vascular intervention, search "vascular interventional surgical robot" on YouTube.