Vicarious Surgical, a Waltham-based tech startup bringing virtual reality and robotics to surgery, announced this week that it will officially be making its public debut on Monday through a deal with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) D8 Holdings, valuing the company at $1.1 billion.
Following the close of the transaction, the combined company will be renamed Vicarious Surgical Inc. and will be traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbols “RBOT” and “RBOT WS,” respectively. This agreement was initially announced in April, and is expected to provide about $220 million in gross proceeds to further the development and commercialization of Vicarious Surgical’s tech.
Speaking of Vicarious Surgical’s tech, here’s how it works: By combining virtual reality and its proprietary surgical robots, the company allows surgeons to perform minimally invasive procedures from anywhere. In practice, the robot is meant to “mimic the surgeon’s hands, wrists, elbows and shoulders, effectively shrinking and placing the surgeon inside the human body,” CEO Adam Sachs, an MIT-trained roboticist who co-founded the company back in 2014, told Built In via email.
“With our public debut,” he continued, “we are now able to further develop our product offering and manufacturing capabilities, bringing much needed innovation to surgeons and patients.”
Sachs added that the company plans to more than double its 100-person team in the coming months too.
To date, Vicarious Surgical’s robots have been granted “breakthrough device designation” by the Food and Drug Administration, and have also won the backing of industry titans like Marc Benioff and Bill Gates. Looking more broadly, this tech has the potential to increase access and reduce costs in the healthcare industry as a whole.
Driving a Paradigm Shift
Of course, Vicarious Surgical isn’t the only rising star in this space. From warehouse fulfillment to food prep and delivery, robots seem to be everywhere — and are raking in millions of dollars in VC funding while they’re at it. A large piece of this pie is going to surgical VR robots and the larger surgery space in general, all in an effort to make the process smarter, safer and more affordable.
Just this week, Caresyntax, another Boston-area startup that uses artificial intelligence to help surgeons do their job better, announced it raised another $30 million in Series C funding. This, plus the other $100 million the company raised in April, brings the round’s total to $130 million.
Founded in 2016, Caresyntax’s AI-enabled software continuously analyzes large volumes of real-world data to provide actionable insights that surgeons can use to improve their care and better train young doctors. The information is also useful in helping hospital administrators manage resources, medical device companies advance their products, and insurance companies devise more tailored policies.
“While surgery accounts for more than half of all hospital revenue, it is also unfortunately by far the biggest driver of post-treatment complications and mortality for patients, meaning health systems must use every tool at their disposal to manage risk in and around the OR,” Caresyntax co-founder and executive Bjӧrn von Siemens said in a statement. “As more U.S. healthcare systems shift to value-based care arrangements, Caresyntax brings a proven model for reducing variability in surgical outcomes, and thereby driving big gains in financial performance.”
Caresyntax is one of many players in the medtech space to garner investor attention in the last year. In fact, last quarter, the sector saw the highest level of venture funding in four years, according to a recent report, indicating that the industry isn’t cooling down anytime soon.
And now, with this latest funding and the recent public debut of Vicarious Surgical, surgery — and surgical robotics — is entering into a “new chapter,” as D8 President Donald Tang put it.
“We believe in Vicarious Surgical’s potential to drive a paradigm shift in the cost and accessibility of certain surgical procedures as well as improvements to patient outcomes,” Tang said in a statement. “We consider Vicarious Surgical to be a thought leader in the surgical space and we believe that the market is ready for surgical robots that drive efficiency and improved quality of patient care.”
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