Ronovo Surgical from China has gone on to close $67M Series D funding by JJDC, which happens to be a Johnson & Johnson venture capital organization, the company recently said in a statement that was posted on LinkedIn.
Besides this, Ronovo also signed an agreement with Johnson & Johnson Medical Shanghai Ltd. in order to expand its surgical technology offerings across hospitals in parts of China. This partnership happens to cover the Carina robotic surgery platform of Ronovo for soft tissue procedures as well as complementary J&J surgical products.
Ronovo, which happens to be Shanghai-based, has also said it has started an international expansion, which goes on to include the regulatory submissions throughout Europe as well as South America.
Ronovo which has raised $67M Series D funding by JJDC has already gone on to raise over $100 million in 2024, which happens to include its Series C round that was led by Granite Asia. The company has already brought in $44mn in Series B financing in 2024, after securing over $50 million in the past.
According to its CEO, John Ma, who also happens to be a former Intuitive Surgical executive, Ronovo is indeed committed so as to democratize the access to surgical robotics on a worldwide scale.
Ma and Ying Mao, who happens to be the chief operating and technology officer, went on to found Ronovo in 2019. Mao comes from Auris Health, the Monarch robot developer, which J&JÂ went on to acquire in 2019.
It is well to be noted that the Carina robot from Ronovo went on to receive the regulatory approval from the National Medical Products Administration of China in March 2025 when it comes to general surgery, gynecology, urology, and thoracic surgery. This modular soft tissue platform goes on to address the agility and adaptability as well as affordability challenges that happen to be posed by the legacy robotic surgical systems. This partnership along with J&J is indeed going to speed up the commercial momentum in China and at the same time also lay the foundation when it comes to international growth, opined Ma.
Ronovo is going ahead and also scaling up in a very crowded field pertaining to surgical robots, thereby challenging the grip of Intuitive on the market. J&J itself is also preparing to come up with a soft tissue robot named Ottava in the U.S. and has also said that it has plans to submit a de novo application to the FDA in the first quarter of next year.
On the other hand, Intuitive has faced certain barriers in the China market ever since 2022, when numerous provinces went ahead and set limits on what hospitals can charge the patients as far as surgeries using robotic technology are concerned. The limits have indeed gone on to affect the various procedures that are performed, and also Intuitive’s instruments as well as accessories revenue have not had a material effect on the business as of June 2025, said the company in its security filing report.