vascular-intervention
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Motasim Sirhan Spent a Career Building Stents. Then He Asked the Artery to Move Again.
After helping build the modern stent business, the Elixir Medical founder chose a harder brief: support the vessel, then give it back its motion. The result took more than 150 bench iterations, a major technical pivot, and nearly two decades of clinical work.
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.
InterVene, Inc.
InterVene, Inc. is a Redwood City, California vascular medical device company building catheter-based tools for severe venous disease. Born out of Stanford Biodesign, it first pioneered BlueLeaf, a non-implantable system that forms new vein valves from a patient's own tissue, then pivoted its lead product to Recana, an FDA-cleared thrombectomy catheter system that clears venous in-stent restenosis and native-vessel obstructions - a stubborn problem that leaves stented patients with debilitating complications and few good options.
Yunfei Cao
Yunfei 'Richard' Cao is the co-founder and CEO of Angio8 (通甪科技), a Shenzhen-based startup building a next-generation surgical robot for minimally invasive vascular interventional surgery. A Stony Brook biomedical engineer who cut his teeth inside the Boston medical-device machine at Vention Medical, SunMed and China Med Device, Cao now runs a cross-Pacific company - engineering brains in Boston, manufacturing and clinical work in Shenzhen - aimed at letting doctors steer catheters and guidewires by robot instead of by hand.
Penumbra, Inc.
Penumbra, Inc. is an Alameda, California medical device company that builds tools to pull life-threatening blood clots out of the body. Founded in 2004 by attorney-turned-CEO Adam Elsesser and neuro-interventional surgeon Dr. Arani Bose, it pioneered aspiration-based mechanical thrombectomy for acute ischemic stroke and expanded into peripheral, venous, and pulmonary clot removal with its Indigo and Lightning Flash systems. The company also runs an Immersive Healthcare arm using virtual reality (the REAL System) for rehabilitation and wellness. Public on the NYSE since 2015 under ticker PEN, Penumbra posted $1.4 billion in 2025 revenue and agreed in January 2026 to be acquired by Boston Scientific in a roughly $14.5 billion deal.