CMR Surgical

Kyushu University has started a two-year trial, running through 2027 with support from Japan's internal affairs ministry, in which surgeons at Kyushu University Hospital in Fukuoka will remotely operate a microsurgery robot at its Beppu hospital about 110 km away over NTT's IOWN APN all-photonics network, according to ITmedia as reported by Robot Newspaper (irobotnews); the university's own release was not opened, so details are unconfirmed. According to the report, partners include the Japan Surgical Society, F.MED, which is developing a robot to suture vessels under 1 mm with thread finer than 0.009 mm, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, NTT Innovative Devices and Seiran, and the trial targets round-trip latency under 5 milliseconds with uncompressed high-definition video. This year's work tests video transmission quality; in 2027 the team plans to operate the robot remotely, and it will also trial a patented video-annotation tool for supervising surgeons. Remote surgery is a theme MEKAWIRE follows through surgical-robot companies such as CMR Surgical, whose Stryker deal this week shows the commercial side, and NTT is already in our company database.

Stryker and CMR Surgical said in a joint press release on Oct 12 that Stryker will make a preferred equity investment of about $400 million (£300 million) in the Cambridge, England, surgical robot maker, a stake that also gives Stryker an exclusive option to acquire 100% of CMR's equity later on terms the companies did not disclose. Stryker becomes the exclusive U.S. sales agent for the Versius soft-tissue robot, while CMR keeps development and commercialisation outside the United States, and Stryker's Group President for Medsurg and Neurotechnology, Andy Pierce, joins CMR's board. Pierce said Stryker had studied soft-tissue robotics for years and chose Versius for its fit in hospitals and ambulatory surgery centres; the deal still needs regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. In MEKAWIRE's funding records, CMR's last disclosed priced amount was a $600 million Series D in June 2021, and its April 2025 equity-and-debt package carries no disclosed figure, so Stryker's cheque is the largest disclosed inflow into the company in five years.

Intuitive placed 468 da Vinci systems in the second quarter of 2026, up from 395 a year earlier, including 246 da Vinci 5 units, and revenue rose 19% to $2.89 billion, the company said on 16 July. It lifted its 2026 non-GAAP gross margin outlook to 68% to 69% of revenue, the second increase this year, while holding da Vinci procedure growth guidance at 13.5% to 15.5% and pointing to the midpoint.

Swiss surgical robot maker Distalmotion closed a US$150 million Series G led by Revival Healthcare Capital on 18 November 2025 and named former Silk Road Medical chief executive Chas McKhann executive chairman. Johnson & Johnson's venture arm followed with a strategic investment in January 2026, and by August the FDA had cleared DEXTER for five procedures aimed at ambulatory surgery centres.