Rob Surgical Secures €5M Funding to Advance Bitrack Robotic System as a Da Vinci Alternative

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned that on September 26, 2019, Rob Surgical announced the completion of a €5 million financing round. The round was led by Scranton Enterprises, a Netherlands-based holding company, to support the R&D and market launch efforts for Rob Surgical’s new system, Bitrack, as it enters the final sprint toward commercialization. Osborne Clarke and RCD Law Firm provided legal advice during the financing process.

Rob Surgical, co-founded by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), is dedicated to designing and developing novel robotic systems for minimally invasive surgery. Headquartered in Barcelona, the company’s mission is to democratize high-precision surgery to address challenges in the medical community and improve patient care.

Jaume Amat, CEO of Rob Surgical and President of CataloniaBio & HealthTech, stated, “This investment will enable us to obtain CE certification within 30 months. We believe the Bitrack system will replace the current da Vinci laparoscopic surgical robot and improve the efficiency of existing technologies.”

Jaume Amat stated, “Bitcrack’s value proposition, which distinguishes it from other surgical robots, stems from three key elements: high precision to benefit patients, high availability to benefit surgeons, and low cost to benefit hospitals.”

To achieve this goal, a team of engineers at Rob Surgical, led by Professors Josep Amat and Alícia Casals, has designed a flexible, modular, open-source robotic platform. This platform aims to enhance the surgical efficiency of current robotic systems and make them accessible to more hospitals worldwide, thereby enabling both manual and robotic surgical procedures—specifically, Hybrid Minimally Invasive Surgery (HMIS).

Currently, the new Bitrack robot has undergone technical validation on experimental models, and surgeons from Mayo Clinic in the United States, Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, and Trias in Germany are all using this model.

Rob Surgical stated that the company has also raised nearly $8.9 million from private investors and over $1.1 million in public funding. Between 2019 and 2021, Rob Surgical will establish three new departments to complete the validation and industrialization processes, expand its corporate and engineering teams, and conduct final safety and functionality trials.

Scranton Enterprises, established in 1999, is a diversified holding company. The firm focuses on healthcare, real estate, and high-growth companies. It demonstrates strong capabilities in execution speed, corporate engagement, capital deployment, and value creation for stakeholders.

Osborne Clarke, established in 1748, is an international legal advisory firm with more than 270 partners and over 850 distinguished lawyers across 26 locations worldwide.

RCD, established in 2003, is a leading independent law firm with a team of over 300 professionals and offices in Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia. RCD has been dedicated to innovative projects, collaborating with public research institutions in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. The Financial Times has ranked the firm as one of the most innovative law firms in Europe.

(Compiled by Jiang Ying)