CMR Surgical is aiming to keep up the momentum as its minimally invasive robotic system continues to roll out around the globe, and the U.K. company has now raised 133 million pounds sterling for a new push.
While certainly large, the number is a few steps down from the company’s last funding round—though that amount will probably forever be hard to top: It raised nearly $600 million in a truly massive series D round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 and Ally Bridge Group in mid-2021.
Those two investors returned to join the latest fundraising—which totals about $165 million—as did the former Fierce 15 winner’s previous backers in Cambridge Innovation Capital, Escala Capital, LGT, Lightrock, RPMI Railpen, Tencent and Watrium.
According to the company, its Versius system counts more than 140 installations in international hospitals, which to date have been used to conduct more than 15,000 keyhole surgeries across at least 130 different procedure types, including within general, urological, gynecological and thoracic specialties.
Versius, with its cart-mounted, modular robotic arms that mimic the movements of the human arm, received a CE mark for European approval in early 2019, but it has not yet been approved by the FDA. Systems have also been placed in Latin America and Brazil, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
And its global use appears to be accelerating, with CMR reporting that it only crossed the 10,000-procedure threshold back in March of this year. At that time, the company said that nearly 90% of its customers were employing the movable system among multiple hospital departments, while 25% had deployed Versius across as many as seven major surgical specialties.
The latest proceeds are slated in part to support commercial expansions into additional geographies, the company said, while estimating the global market for robot-assisted soft-tissue surgeries to be north of $7 billion and growing at more than 15% per year.
“More and more surgeons and patients are benefiting from Versius and our latest funding round will allow us to serve even more customers, supporting our continued growth in existing markets, as well as expansion into new key markets,” CMR CEO Supratim Bose said in the company’s most recent fundraising announcement.
Bose was named chief of the company this past March, just weeks after joining CMR as a senior adviser and commercial head for operations in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Bose previously spent nearly 30 years at Johnson & Johnson and has also held executive roles at Boston Scientific and ConvaTec.