One company, two ledgers: a five-minute artery test that scans for hidden vascular disease, and a corporate treasury that traded idle cash for Bitcoin.
It stopped making the Band-Aid. What is left is a $94-billion bet that the future of Johnson & Johnson is written on a prescription pad and a robotic arm.
Selera Medical is a Y Combinator-backed (W24) medical device startup building MILO - minimally invasive lymphatic offloading - a one-time, catheter-based procedure that treats fluid overload in chronic heart failure. Instead of a lifelong drug regimen, Selera taps the body's lymphatic system to drain trapped fluid from the interstitial space, aiming to break the cycle of repeat hospitalizations that defines late-stage heart failure. Founded in 2023 by CEO Stacie Arechavala and CTO Kevin Bui, both former Stanford Biodesign fellows.
Spectrumedics Medical is a Singapore-based medical device company building active, minimally-invasive cardiovascular interventional systems. Its flagship product, the Sonico-CX intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) system, uses acoustic pressure waves to break up calcified coronary lesions so cardiologists can restore blood flow and place stents. In January 2026 the company earned an EU CE mark, joining Johnson & Johnson MedTech's Shockwave and Elixir Medical as one of the few companies with EU-approved coronary IVL systems. Backed by a Series A round led by Legend Capital, Spectrumedics operates from the JTC MedTech Hub and is commercializing across Asia Pacific and Latin America while expanding into Europe and the Middle East.
Angio8 (Shenzhen Tonglu Technology, 通甪科技) is a medical robotics company building a surgical robot and treatment platform for minimally invasive vascular interventional procedures. Its system lets physicians remotely manipulate catheters and guidewires with force feedback, aiming to make interventional surgery safer, more precise, and less reliant on repeated radiation exposure for the operating team. Founded in 2021 and based in Shenzhen's Bao'an District, the company is led by co-founder and CEO Yunfei (Richard) Cao and is backed by investors including Oriental Fortune Capital, Kangyu Capital and Ruiqian Capital.
Axon Therapies is a clinical-stage medical device company developing SAVM (Splanchnic Ablation for Volume Management), a minimally invasive, implant-free catheter procedure that ablates the greater splanchnic nerve to calm an overactive sympathetic nervous system and rebalance blood volume in patients with heart failure - particularly heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Incubated by the medtech studio Coridea and backed by leading healthcare investors, the company is advancing its Satera Ablation System through randomized, sham-controlled feasibility trials.
Elixir Medical Corporation is a privately held Milpitas, California medical device company building implantable technologies to treat coronary and peripheral artery disease. Its flagship DynamX Coronary Bioadaptor is a metal implant with a resorbable polymer coating that dissolves over roughly six months, 'uncaging' the artery so the vessel can pulse and move naturally rather than remaining permanently rigid like a conventional stent. Founded in 2005 by Motasim Sirhan, Elixir has produced a lineage of coronary devices - the DESolve bioresorbable scaffold, the DESyne family of drug-eluting stents, the LithiX intravascular lithotripsy system, and the DynamX bioadaptor - and has reported two consecutive randomized trials showing reduced long-term cardiac event rates versus current drug-eluting stents.
Fogarty Innovation is a nonprofit medtech incubator and education organization on the El Camino Health campus in Mountain View, California. Founded in 2007 by legendary surgeon-inventor Thomas J. Fogarty, MD, it helps early-stage medical device companies cross the gap from novel idea to clinical reality through hands-on coaching, education programs, and a network of 300+ industry experts. In October 2025 it merged with New York's Cardiovascular Research Foundation to become CRF's West Coast innovation hub.
Inquis Medical is a Silicon Valley medical device company founded in 2020 by serial medtech entrepreneurs Vahid and Mojgan Saadat. Its flagship AVENTUS Precision Thrombectomy System removes blood clots from patients with pulmonary embolism (PE) and deep vein thrombosis (DVT), using proprietary TrueClot tissue-sensing technology that gives physicians real-time feedback to distinguish blood, clot, and vessel wall while minimizing blood loss through autologous blood reinfusion. Backed by $115M in total funding including a $75M Series C in January 2026, the company is scaling nationwide commercial adoption after winning FDA 510(k) clearance for PE in 2025.
Shifamed is a Silicon Valley medical technology incubator founded in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Amr Salahieh. It combines human-centered design, in-house engineering, and R&D facilities to build medical device companies from concept to commercial launch, spinning out and incubating startups across cardiovascular, electrophysiology, and ophthalmology. Its portfolio and legacy companies have raised over $800M and produced multiple acquisitions by Boston Scientific, Abbott, Covidien, and Johnson & Johnson.
Supira Medical is a clinical-stage cardiovascular device company in Los Gatos, California, building a next-generation percutaneous ventricular assist device (pVAD). Incubated inside Amr Salahieh's Shifamed innovation hub and led by CEO Nitin Salunke, the Supira System is a low-profile (10F), high-flow heart pump designed to give the heart temporary circulatory support during high-risk coronary interventions and cardiogenic shock, with the goal of moving more blood through a smaller sheath than the incumbent devices. The company raised a $120M oversubscribed Series E in March 2025 and won FDA approval to begin its SUPPORT II pivotal trial in 2026.
Adona Medical is a clinical-stage medical device company in Los Gatos, California developing the Delphi System, a chronically adjustable interatrial shunt with integrated bi-atrial pressure monitoring designed to personalize heart failure therapy over time. A Shifamed portfolio company founded in 2019 by Brian Fahey, Amr Salahieh, and Lewis Schwartz, Adona uses shape memory nitinol and an external induction catheter to resize the shunt after implantation without further invasive procedures.
Auxilius Pharma is a clinical-stage cardiovascular pharmaceutical company developing AUX-001, a once-daily extended-release formulation of nicorandil for the roughly 11 million Americans living with chronic stable angina. By reformulating an established molecule through the FDA's 505(b)(2) pathway, the company aims to deliver what would be the first new innovative oral angina therapy in the US since 2006 - improving adherence, tolerability and outcomes for patients who still suffer symptoms despite optimal treatment.
Basking Biosciences is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing the first reversible thrombolytic therapy for acute ischemic stroke. Its lead candidate, BB-031, is a first-in-class RNA aptamer that inhibits von Willebrand Factor to break up clots quickly, paired with a companion reversal agent, BB-025, that can switch the drug's activity off in minutes if bleeding occurs. Spun out of research begun at Duke University and founded in 2019, the company is based in the Research Triangle of North Carolina and is advancing BB-031 through a Phase 2 RAISE trial.
DeLorean Artificial Intelligence is a Palm Beach, Florida-based healthcare AI company that builds predictive and interventive intelligence to forecast chronic disease and recommend next-best clinical actions before a patient gets sicker. Its flagship Medical AI platform, MARTI, analyzes structured and unstructured health records to predict events like hospitalizations and disease progression - and is described as the first medical AI to be biologically validated by independent third parties. Founded in 2019 by Dr. Severence MacLaughlin, the company also applies its predictive engine to sales/CRM, life sciences, financial services and other industries.
Intravascular Imaging Incorporated (i3) is a Wilton, Connecticut medical device company building a next-generation coronary imaging catheter. Its 3-French NIRF-IVUS catheter fuses intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), the clinical standard for guiding stent placement, with near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) molecular imaging in a single device. The combination lets cardiologists see not just the anatomy of a coronary artery but the biology inside it - plaque inflammation, arterial dissections, transplant vasculopathy, and fibrin in unhealed stents. Spun out of work at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and the Technical University of Munich, i3 aims to upgrade percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) by helping doctors look beyond anatomy.
Salubris Biotherapeutics (SalubrisBio) is a clinical-stage biotechnology company in Gaithersburg, Maryland that engineers complex biologics for diseases with few good options - chiefly heart failure and cancer. Founded in 2016 as the US arm of China's Shenzhen Salubris Pharmaceuticals, its lead candidate JK07 is an antibody-fusion protein designed to harness the regenerative NRG-1/ErbB4 pathway in failing hearts while dialing out the side effects, and its oncology programs JK08 and JK06 pursue solid tumors through immune engagement and a 5T4-targeted biparatopic antibody-drug conjugate.
Kardigan is a South San Francisco heart health company modernizing cardiovascular drug development. Founded by the team behind MyoKardia, it pairs a late-stage clinical pipeline in dilated cardiomyopathy, acute severe hypertension and calcific aortic valve stenosis with a 'cardiac intelligence' platform - real-world patient data and AI - to match disease drivers to the right responders.