RuiTouch Robotics Files for Hong Kong IPO: Zero Revenue Despite Installation in 39 Top Hospitals

On May 27, 2026, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange disclosed the IPO prospectus of a distinctive hard-tech contender—Shanghai Ruitouch Robotics. The prospectus had been submitted confidentially on December 5, 2025.

This is a Chinese-made medical robotics company that has sparked considerable discussion.

From a clinical perspective, it is widely recognized as a powerhouse in its field: its self-developed CT-guided puncture robot has obtained the National Class III Medical Device Certificate. The product has been deployed in 39 top-tier Grade A tertiary hospitals across China, covering core departments including oncology, thoracic surgery, interventional medicine, and radiology. With the number of trial installations, it firmly holds the second position in the domestic percutaneous puncture robot market. Holding 101 core patents, its technological pathway leads the industry.

But turning to the financial aspect, which is most valued by the capital market:

In 2023, the revenue was RMB 156,000;

In 2024, revenue was RMB 0;

In the first half of 2025, revenue was 0 yuan.

Over two and a half years, losses amounted to 89.33 million yuan.

On one side: clinical endorsement from top-tier Grade 3A hospitals, industry leadership in niche segments, and fully autonomous, controllable core technologies. On the other side: unrealized commercialization and periodic operational pressures stemming from sustained R&D investment.

The growth trajectory of Ruitouch Robotics is a true microcosm of the current domestic innovative surgical robotics industry, characterized by “technology deployment first, commercial monetization later.”

Amid the surging wave of domestic substitution and intense investor appetite for hard-tech healthcare innovations, Raytouch has chosen to make a final push for its Hong Kong IPO at a critical juncture in its commercialization strategy. This capital market debut not only serves as a vital move to bolster the company’s growth momentum but also lays bare the realities of industry expansion within the medical robotics sector.

2019 marked the inaugural year of capital investment in China’s surgical robotics sector. At that time, interest peaked in the two major segments of orthopedic and laparoscopic surgery. Established players such as MicroPort and Tinavi attracted maximum attention from capital markets, while a large number of startup teams flocked to enter the field, aiming to secure a share in these mature sectors. The prevailing industry consensus was that following hot market trends would enable the fastest access to financing, the most rapid product commercialization, and the quickest realization of commercial value.

Amidst this broader industry landscape, Liu Jian, founder of Raytouch Robotics, who has devoted years to advancing medical automation technology, made a pivotal and solitary counter-trend decision: to abandon the fiercely competitive general-purpose surgical robotics sector,All-in CT-Guided Percutaneous Puncture Surgical RobotThis niche subsector.

At the time, percutaneous puncture was widely regarded in the industry as a “thankless” and formidable challenge. In clinical practice, there was substantial demand for puncture procedures targeting solid tumors in organs such as the lungs and liver. Traditional techniques relied entirely on physicians’ individual experience, with freehand operations suffering from poor precision and high error rates, readily leading to complications such as pneumothorax and hemorrhage. Young physicians faced learning curves spanning several years, making the clinical pain points exceptionally pronounced. However, corresponding solutions remained largely unavailable for an extended period. Mainstream optical and electromagnetic navigation-guided puncture systems were plagued by numerous issues, including bulky equipment, poor adaptability to operating room environments, cumbersome operational workflows, and the need for repeated manual registration and calibration, thereby preventing their large-scale adoption.

“Everyone is developing general-purpose robots that are easy to commercialize, but no one is willing to delve deeply into the specialized niches that address genuine clinical imperatives and truly resolve the pain points of complex surgeries.” This was the core strategic direction Liu Jian set for his team in the early stages of his venture. In his view, the core competitive barrier in hard-tech healthcare has never been about following trends and engaging in cutthroat competition, but rather about addressing unmet critical clinical needs. The more challenging the technological pathway, the more it can establish a long-term, irreplaceable moat.

After defining its strategic direction, Ruitouch completely abandoned the industry-standard navigation technology roadmap and embarked on a multi-year technological breakthrough. The team focused on core pain points, striving to build a fully autonomous CT sensing technology platform, and overcame key technical challenges such as the real-time fusion of CT image coordinates with robotic arm physical coordinates, millimeter-level precise positioning, and rapid, registration-free adaptation to operating room scenarios.

This is a protracted and capital-intensive battle. Daily routines for the R&D team include mechanical structure debugging, imaging algorithm iteration, clinical data matching, and equipment stability testing. To date, the company has secured 101 granted patents, including 44 core invention patents and 50 utility model patents. These patents comprehensively cover core areas such as CT sensing, mechanical linkage, intelligent algorithms, and surgical navigation, completely eliminating reliance on foreign technologies and establishing a proprietary, differentiated technological barrier.

Precise market positioning and solid technological accumulation have also earned Ruichu recognition from professional investors. In its early stages, the company completed four rounds of equity financing, raising a total of RMB 165.8 million. Prominent healthcare investment firms such as New Silk Road Leading Capital and Walden International provided continuous support, offering critical funding for early-stage R&D, team building, and clinical trial preparation. This financial backing has enabled the startup to steadily advance in an untapped market niche.

For Class III medical device companies, clinical trials and product registration are the critical make-or-break hurdles on the path from laboratory to commercialization. After solidifying its technological foundation, Raytouch shifted its full focus to clinical translation of its products, initiating a rare pace of rapid market entry within the sector.

On January 7, 2022, Ruichu’s core product, the RC120 Puncture Surgical Robot, officially launched a nationwide multicenter clinical trial. Diverging from the industry’s typically protracted clinical timelines, the Ruichu team collaborated closely with clinical experts at numerous Grade A tertiary hospitals across China. By maintaining on-site presence throughout the trial process and collecting real-time surgical feedback, the team continuously optimized and iterated on key details such as operational precision, system stability, and surgical adaptability. Through coordinated efforts among R&D, clinical, and regulatory affairs teams, the clinical trial period was compressed to the greatest extent possible.

On February 20, 2023, after only 13 months, RC120 efficiently completed all clinical trials. Its clinical data outperformed similar products in the industry, comprehensively surpassing traditional freehand techniques and mainstream navigation systems in terms of surgical precision, complication reduction, operational simplification, and procedure time compression. In February 2024, RC120 successfully obtained the Class III Medical Device Registration Certificate issued by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA), officially securing its commercialization license and becoming one of the few pure CT-guided puncture surgical robots to achieve clinical implementation in China.

In January 2022, RC120 officially entered clinical trials;

Clinical trials completed in February 2023;

In February 2024, the Class III medical device registration certificate was obtained.

The speed is remarkably fast, ranking among the top throughout the entire track.

On the day the certificate was issued, the team believed the most difficult phase had passed. However, the true test of commercialization had only just begun.

RuiChu swiftly initiated its clinical commercialization strategy thereafter, leveraging robust clinical data and product advantages to rapidly penetrate China’s top-tier healthcare systems. Within just one year, the RC120 was successfully adopted by 39 core Grade-A tertiary hospitals, including The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Shanxi Bethune Hospital, and Union Hospital affiliated with Fujian Medical University. It has achieved comprehensive coverage across major departments performing puncture procedures, such as thoracic surgery, interventional radiology, oncology, and radiology, and is compatible with a full spectrum of procedural applications, including needle biopsy, tumor ablation, preoperative localization, and seed implantation.

In clinical practice, the RC120, equipped with a 7-degree-of-freedom robotic arm and real-time CT image fusion technology, achieves millimeter-level precision in needle placement. It accurately avoids critical structures such as bones and blood vessels, significantly reducing the number of intraoperative needle adjustments. This substantially lowers the operational threshold for complex percutaneous procedures, ensuring surgical safety while greatly enhancing hospital efficiency, earning widespread recognition from frontline clinicians. Thanks to its outstanding clinical performance, the RC120 secured the second position in China’s percutaneous puncture robot market in 2024 by trial installation volume, trailing only the industry leader Zhen Jiankang, thereby firmly establishing itself among the top players in this niche segment.

At that time, RayTouch held a mature product portfolio, top-tier clinical endorsements, proprietary core technologies, and a clear product pipeline. It had already navigated the most challenging technological and clinical phases for a deep-tech enterprise, with commercial scale-up just around the corner. However, dictated by the nature of the industry, behind the spotlight of high-volume clinical installations lay the persistent challenge of ramping up commercial adoption.

Because there is an unwritten rule in the medical device industry:

Installation ≠ Sales, Trial Use ≠ Revenue.

The prevailing logic in hospitals is: use first, evaluate second, tender third, and procure last.

For high-value equipment such as surgical robots, the process is longer, decision-making is more cautious, and the pace is slower.

The medical device industry is characterized by typical long-cycle attributes, which are particularly evident in the high-end surgical robotics sector: clinical installation and validation precede large-scale tendering and payment collection. For innovative medical devices in entirely new categories, hospitals in China generally adopt an implementation model of “academic trials, clinical validation, and gradual tender-based procurement.” This approach prioritizes the dissemination of clinical value before initiating large-scale procurement. Such industry dynamics have created a phased temporal gap in the commercialization and implementation of Ruichu.

Although RC120 has been in routine clinical use at 39 Grade A tertiary hospitals, with its product value fully validated, it remains in the phase of clinical academic promotion and value verification, and large-scale sales orders have not yet materialized in a concentrated manner. This has shaped the company’s phased operational characteristics: in 2023, the company generated only RMB 156,000 in sporadic technical service revenue, with no bulk equipment sales income; throughout 2024 and the first half of 2025, the company was in the stage of commercialization preparation and market groundwork, resulting in a temporary drop of main business revenue to zero, as the enterprise has not yet entered a cycle of scaled, self-sustaining revenue generation.

With zero revenue, rigid expenditure pressures remain at their peak, making high R&D investment the primary driver of the company’s losses. The prospectus disclosed that the company’s R&D expenditures were RMB 23.861 million in 2023, RMB 18.904 million in 2024, and RMB 9.053 million in the first half of 2025, totaling over RMB 51.8 million over the two-and-a-half-year period and accounting for the absolute majority of the company’s total expenditures.

Following the initial commercialization of its flagship product, the company did not rest on its laurels but continued to advance its comprehensive pipeline strategy. On one hand, it accelerated the expansion of indications for the RC120, striving for regulatory approval for abdominal solid organ puncture, while simultaneously developing intelligent features such as AI-assisted 3D reconstruction and dynamic respiratory compensation. On the other hand, it rolled out multiple new products, including the cost-effective RC100 model for primary care institutions, as well as specialized systems for spinal surgery, neurosurgery, and CT-integrated puncture robotics. Concurrently, the company is pursuing regulatory submissions for four categories of disposable puncture consumables, aiming to establish a closed-loop profitability model encompassing “equipment + consumables + services.”

The continuous expansion of the pipeline, ongoing technological iterations, and steady team growth, coupled with phase-specific fixed costs such as academic marketing, clinical maintenance, and facility production, have resulted in periodic losses during the company’s R&D investment phase. The company reported a net loss of RMB 34.211 million in 2023, RMB 36.999 million in 2024, and RMB 18.121 million in the first half of 2025, accumulating a total periodic net loss of RMB 89.331 million during the reporting period, entirely attributable to upfront investments in innovative R&D and commercialization.

Thus, RayTouch exhibits the typical growth characteristics of innovative domestic surgical robot enterprises: established technical barriers, proven clinical reputation, and vast market potential. However, its commercialization pace is slightly lagging, necessitating capital infusion to accelerate growth. For hard-tech medical companies, technological iteration requires long-term dedication, while commercial scale-up depends on alignment with industry cycles and procurement rhythms.

Over the years that Raytouch has delved deeply into technology and refined its clinical applications, the once-niche sector of percutaneous puncture robots has rapidly shifted from a blue ocean to a red ocean.

The biopsy robot sector in China has now formed a clear competitive hierarchy: Zhenjiankang firmly holds the industry’s top position by virtue of its first-mover advantage, while Ruitouch secures the second place. Meanwhile, listed medical giants such as MicroPort Medical, Tinavi Medical Technologies, and United Imaging Healthcare are actively laying out their respective pipelines, leveraging their substantial financial strength, distribution channels, and brand resources to continuously squeeze the survival space for startup enterprises.

More critically, industry policies have continued to evolve toward standardization and healthy development. In January 2026, the National Healthcare Security Administration officially issued tiered pricing standards for surgical robots, establishing upper price limits across three tiers based on the functional level of device participation in surgeries. This move has established a standardized pricing system for the industry, which will benefit the clinical adoption and standardized implementation of innovative devices in the long run.

Although biopsy robots have not yet been included in the national centralized procurement, cost containment through medical insurance and value-based healthcare have become industry trends. These factors will drive the sector’s transition from “extensive innovation” to “high-quality, high-value innovation,” thereby clarifying the long-term profitability logic of the industry.

The filing of the Hong Kong IPO prospectus represents a significant strategic move by the company to seize the benefits of domestic substitution, accelerate commercialization, and enhance its full-industry-chain layout.

Clinical expertise, technology, patents, hospital partnerships, and capital—RuiChu has secured nearly all the key advantages.

But what it lacks most is the most important card: revenue.

How to Break the Deadlock?

Leveraging the established clinical foundation across 39 Grade-A tertiary hospitals, we will accelerate the conversion of equipment tender procurements, transforming “trial installation volumes” into “actual sales.” By deploying the affordable RC100 model to penetrate county-level healthcare markets, we aim to unlock incremental growth. Capitalizing on the recurring purchase nature of four categories of puncture consumables, we will build a sustainable cash flow loop. Furthermore, by leveraging our multi-departmental product pipeline and overseas regulatory registration strategy, we will raise the ceiling for long-term growth.

For Raytouch Robotics, which has been deeply engaged in its niche for seven years, it has achieved the most critical technological breakthroughs and clinical validation for domestic medical startups: conquering core technologies in an underserved segment, obtaining a Class III medical device registration certificate, securing top-tier clinical resources, and establishing itself as a leader in this specialized field.

Standing at the threshold of the Hong Kong stock market, Raytouch holds three core advantages in technology, clinical validation, and pipeline development, positioning it at a critical window for commercial scale-up.

In the future, can this leading CT-guided biopsy robot company leverage its IPO proceeds to accelerate commercialization and evolve from a “clinical technology benchmark” into a “large-scale profitable enterprise”? Can it continue to strengthen differentiated barriers in its niche segment and seize the opportunities of domestic substitution by relying on a closed-loop consumables model and a comprehensive product pipeline?

RuiChu’s journey to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is not only a path to realizing its own corporate value but will also serve as a key case study for observing the high-quality development of China’s minimally invasive interventional surgical robotics industry.