Medical device manufacturer MicroPort Scientific led a €40m ($43.4m) series C round yesterday for Robocath, the France-based developer of a cardiovascular disease treatment system.
The round included Luxembourg CLIIF, an investment fund managed by the Tsinghua University-affiliated TUS-Holdings, as well as regional investment vehicles Go Capital, NCI and Normandie Participations, and national investment funds M Capital and Supernova Invest.
Financial services firm Crédit Agricole’s Unexo and Crédit Agricole Normandie units filled out the round with investment firms CS Group and Anaxago, private equity fund Zhejiang Silk Road Fund, an entity called Cardio Participations and Caisse d’Epargne Normandie, a division of cooperative bank Caisse d’Epargne.
Robocath is working on robotic-assisted medical devices for cardiovascular diseases. Its inaugural product, R-One, is designed to improve the safety of coronary angioplasty, a procedure that involves placing stents into the arteries that supply the heart with blood.
The funding will help the company increase sales and marketing activities for R-One while accelerating product development to address other angioplasty procedures and begin work on peripheral and neurovascular applications.
MicroPort and Robocath have agreed to establish a China-based joint venture to launch R-One in Asia through forming local manufacturing and assembly operations.
The companies will also collaborate on research and development related to devices that can be controlled remotely through 5G networks, and artificial intelligence algorithms that can further improve robotic-assisted systems.
Jonathan Chen, MicroPort’s chief international business officer, will join Robocath’s strategic committee together with Alex He, general manager of MicroPort’s Medbot robotics subsidiary, and Haitong Wang, managing partner at Zhejiang Silk Road Fund.
Robocath had previously received $5.5m from Unexo, fellow Crédit Agricole subsidiary Innove en Normandie, Caisse d’Epargne vehicle Normandie Innovation, Go Capital, NCI, Normandie Participations, M Capital and Supernova Invest in September 2019.
Crédit Agricole Innovations et Territoires led a $2m round for the company in December 2017 that included Cardio Participation and assorted angel investors. It had secured $5.2m in a round co-led by M Capital and Normandie Participations seven months earlier that included Go Capital and NCI.
