# Illuminant Surgical

> Illuminant Surgical is a Culver City / Los Angeles medical device startup building Skylight, a real-time anatomical projection system that displays a patient's internal imaging directly onto their skin during surgery. Using AI, computer vision and dynamic projection mapping - technology borrowed in part from entertainment-industry projection artists - the company aims to give surgeons a kind of 'x-ray vision' for spine surgery, cancer biopsies and other image-guided procedures without forcing them to look away from the operating field.

- **Founded:** 2021
- **Headquarters:** Los Angeles (Culver City), California, United States
- **Founders:** Eldrick Millares (Co-Founder & Co-CEO), James Hu (Co-Founder & Co-CEO (MD))
- **Team size:** ~16-19 employees
- **Products:** Skylight, SkinMatch, LightScreen, PRISM
- **Notable:** Raised an $8.4M seed round (announced April 2026), roughly half of it non-dilutive federal grant funding., Backed by Y Combinator., Developed Skylight, described as the first real-time anatomical projection system for spine surgery and interventional access.

## Products & services

- **Skylight** — A real-time anatomical projection system - effectively a smart surgical lamp - that displays a patient's medical imaging directly onto their skin during spine surgery and interventional access, so surgeons never have to look away from the operative field.
- **SkinMatch** — Non-invasive patient registration and tracking that uses adhesive skin markers plus computer vision to align medical images with the patient's anatomy in real time.
- **LightScreen** — Depth-adaptive projection technology that renders anatomical detail on the skin surface, dynamically adjusting for patient movement and body contours.
- **PRISM** — An earlier camera-projector surgical navigation tool using low-cost commodity hardware and a markerless, surface-topography alignment algorithm to project guidance onto the patient's skin.

## Achievements

- Raised an $8.4M seed round (announced April 2026), roughly half of it non-dilutive federal grant funding.
- Backed by Y Combinator.
- Developed Skylight, described as the first real-time anatomical projection system for spine surgery and interventional access.
- Recruited projection engineers from the entertainment industry (including Disney Imagineering-style performer projection work) to adapt the technology for surgery.
- Assembled a clinical and engineering advisory board including USC's Dr. Jeffrey Wang and Masimo founder Joe Kiani.

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — Announced $8.4M seed round led by Wing 2 Wing Ventures to advance the Skylight image-guided surgical platform.
- **2026-06** — Presence at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles and a ribbon-cutting milestone, per company site.

## Links

- Website: https://illuminant.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/illuminant-surgical
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/IlluminantAI
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/illuminant.ai/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/illuminant-surgical
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-05