medical-robotics
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Josh DeFonzo Is Shrinking the Surgical Robot
After two decades bringing medical technology to market, the Mendaera co-founder is betting that the next useful robot will fit in a clinician’s hand - and do one ordinary, difficult job well.
AiM Medical Robotics
AiM Medical Robotics is a Worcester, Massachusetts medical device company building a portable, MRI-compatible surgical robot that lets neurosurgeons operate under continuous, real-time MRI guidance. Spun out of Gregory Fischer's Automation and Interventional Medicine (AIM) lab at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the platform aims to make procedures such as deep brain stimulation lead placement, biopsy, tumor ablation and targeted drug delivery faster, more precise and less variable - reducing procedure time by up to 50% and expanding access to advanced neurosurgical care.
Angio8
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.
Clarapath
Clarapath is a Hawthorne, New York medical robotics company that automates one of the most manual steps in cancer diagnosis: cutting and transferring paper-thin tissue sections onto slides for pathologists to read. Its flagship system, SectionStar, combines robotics, machine vision and AI to standardize tissue sectioning, cut turnaround times and ease chronic staffing shortages in histology labs. Founded in 2014 out of neuroanatomy research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the company has raised roughly $75 million and works with partners including the Mayo Clinic and Northwell Health.
Conceivable Life Sciences
Conceivable Life Sciences is a New York-based reproductive-medicine company building AURA, described as the world's first AI-powered, automation-assisted IVF laboratory. Using robotics, machine vision, advanced optics and proprietary software, AURA standardizes the 200-plus intricate microscopic steps of in vitro fertilization - from sperm and egg preparation through robotic ICSI, embryo culture and vitrification - to reduce human variability, lower cost, and widen access to fertility care. Founded in 2022 by Joshua Abram, Alan Murray and Dr. Alejandro Chavez-Badiola, the company reported the first live birth from a digitally controlled, remotely operated ICSI system and raised a $50M Series A in 2025 to bring its lab to the U.S.
Morphle Labs Inc.
Morphle Labs is a deep-tech healthcare automation company building robotic and AI-driven imaging systems for cancer diagnostics. Founded in 2017 and now operating between Bengaluru and New York, it combines robotics, optical engineering, and neural-network AI to automate the historically manual steps of histology - from tissue sectioning to whole-slide scanning to remote reporting. Its product line spans the RoboTome robotic microtome, the MorphoLens family of whole-slide scanners, and the HemoLens hematology scanners, giving pathology labs an end-to-end digital workflow at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems.
Eric Feinstein
Eric Feinstein is the President and CEO of Clarapath, a Hawthorne, New York medical robotics company automating one of the last manual corners of the pathology lab: cutting and mounting tissue for diagnosis. Under his leadership Clarapath built SectionStar, an FDA-registered robotic microtomy platform, acquired the digital-pathology software firm Crosscope, forged a research collaboration with Mayo Clinic, and closed a $36M Series B in 2024. A former medical-device investor and operator with an MBA from Cornell, Feinstein frames the histology lab as a Lean Six Sigma manufacturing operation and pitches a broader vision he calls Laboratory 2.0.
Gregory Fischer
Gregory Fischer is the co-founder and CEO of AiM Medical Robotics, a Worcester, Massachusetts company building a portable, MRI-compatible surgical robot for neurosurgery. A robotics engineer with a PhD from Johns Hopkins, Fischer spent nearly two decades as a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he directed the Automation and Interventional Medicine (AIM) Robotics Lab and founded the PracticePoint medtech R&D center. He turned his NIH-funded research into a company aiming to bring real-time image guidance and submillimeter robotic precision into the operating room, with a first-in-human clinical study on the horizon after a $8.1 million Series A in 2025.
Mendaera, Inc.
Mendaera is a Silicon Valley healthcare technology company building Focalist, a fist-sized handheld robotic system that pairs real-time ultrasound imaging with robotic needle guidance and AI to make precise, needle-based procedures more accessible across specialties. Founded in 2020 by Josh DeFonzo and Jason Wilson, both alumni of Auris Health, and backed by Intuitive Surgical and Auris co-founder Dr. Fred Moll, the company aims to move robotics beyond the operating room and into the everyday procedures that make up the bulk of medicine.
Amaury Ciurana
Amaury Ciurana is the co-founder and CEO of REEV, a wearable-robotics company building intelligent motorized orthoses for people with neurological gait disorders. A French aerospace engineer trained at ISAE-SUPAERO and the X-HEC entrepreneurship track, he relocated to Boston in 2023 to lead REEV's US expansion. The company pairs DREEVEN, an AI-powered robotic knee orthosis, with REEV SENSE, a wearable gait-analysis system, and has raised roughly $14M total including a $9.2M round in 2025.
REEV
REEV is a medical robotics company building AI-powered wearable robotics to restore everyday mobility for people with neurological gait disorders after stroke, multiple sclerosis or paraplegia. Its flagship DREEVEN is a lightweight (about 3kg) motorized knee orthosis driven by electro-hydraulic actuation and real-time gait sensing, paired with REEV SENSE, an IMU wearable that turns a person's walking pattern into clinical-grade gait reports. Founded in 2021 and split between Boston and Toulouse, REEV raised $9.2M in February 2025 to finalize DREEVEN, run a clinical study at Boston University and prepare for FDA trials.
Eduardo Fonseca
Eduardo Fonseca is the CEO of XCath, a Houston- and Pangyo-based medtech company building endovascular robotic systems and steerable guidewires to treat stroke and other cerebrovascular conditions. A former Panamanian ambassador to the UAE and Saudi Arabia turned investor and operator, he joined the XCath board in 2019 and took the helm in 2023, also serving as interim CEO of sister company EndoQuest Robotics. Under his leadership XCath has logged a string of world firsts, including the first public remote mechanical thrombectomy demonstration and, in 2026, the world's first remote robotic intervention in a stroke patient.
XCath Robotics
XCath Robotics is a Houston-based medical robotics company building next-generation endovascular robotic systems and steerable smart guidewires to treat stroke, brain aneurysms and other neurovascular conditions. Its flagship Iris system is the only endovascular robot in development capable of intracranial navigation, and the company is racing toward a clinical telerobot that could let a specialist perform a brain-clot removal on a patient hundreds of miles away.
John Adler
John R. Adler Jr., MD is a neurosurgeon, inventor, and serial entrepreneur best known for inventing the CyberKnife robotic radiosurgery system at Stanford University - a device that has treated over two million patients worldwide. Now CEO of ZAP Surgical Systems in San Carlos, California, he leads development of the ZAP-X gyroscopic radiosurgery platform: a self-shielded, vault-free system that brings precision brain radiosurgery to outpatient settings globally. A 2025 inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Adler is also co-founder and former editor-in-chief of Cureus, an open-access medical journal acquired by Springer Nature. With over 300 peer-reviewed publications and 20+ US patents, he holds the Dorothy and TK Chan Professorship Emeritus at Stanford.