Microsurgical robotics platform "Digisight Medical" raises tens of millions of RMB in Pre-A funding led by Linear Capital | Linear News
Dongli Network has learned that **Dishi Medical recently completed a Pre-A round of financing worth tens of millions of RMB, led by Linear Capital with Hillhouse as a co-investor.** The funds from this round will be used primarily to accelerate NMPA Class III medical device registration for its ophthalmic surgical robot, advance R&D on product lines including microsurgical robots, and expand the team.
According to VB Data, Dishi Medical recently completed a Pre-A round of financing worth tens of millions of RMB, led by Linear Capital with Hillhouse participating. The funds will primarily be used to accelerate NMPA Class III medical device registration for its ophthalmic surgical robot, advance R&D on its microsurgical robot pipeline, and expand the team.
Hangzhou Dishi Medical Biotechnology Co., Ltd. was established in July 2021 and is recognized as a national science and technology SME. Its founding team hails from a world-class robotics and AI laboratory in Germany and a Fortune 500 German pharmaceutical company. To date, Dishi Medical has applied for and been granted multiple invention patents in the US and China, and has received awards in several top global and domestic competitions.
Dishi Medical's technical strengths lie in personalized physician-engineer collaboration, multi-degree-of-freedom master-slave control, and proprietary flexible mechanisms, enabling it to achieve motion precision of up to 3 microns — among the highest internationally. The company's product technology and R&D progress are both globally leading.
Dishi Medical entered the market through ophthalmic surgery and is expanding deeper into microsurgery. The team has collaborated with clinical experts for many years, giving them thorough understanding of industry pain points in microsurgery along with extensive experience in both R&D and commercialization of microsurgical robots.
Due to high technical barriers, only a handful of companies worldwide have entered the microsurgical robot space, leaving a blue ocean with substantial market opportunity. Dishi Medical is among the first domestic companies to complete type testing for its ophthalmic surgical robot, with the product now approaching the clinical registration stage.
Ophthalmic surgery represents a typical application scenario for microsurgery. In this field, instruments move around the scleral puncture point, which can easily cause tissue tearing at the incision site and affect postoperative healing. Moreover, ophthalmic surgery demands extremely high precision — ideally 10 microns. However, the human hand naturally trembles by approximately 100 microns, risking retinal damage and compromising vision recovery. Meanwhile, experienced senior surgeons are scarce, with training curves extending as long as ten years for vitreoretinal surgeons, and careers are further limited by age-related physiological decline. For physicians, the minute manipulations in vitreoretinal surgery create enormous pressure, and lengthy procedures held in fixed postures commonly lead to occupational injuries in the cervical spine and wrists.
To address these pain points, Dishi Medical has developed an innovative ophthalmic surgical robot system with independent intellectual property rights, and established an R&D and production base spanning thousands of square meters for both equipment and high-value consumables. With the robot's ultra-high motion precision, ophthalmic surgeons can surpass human physiological limits to perform more precise retinal surgery, significantly improving surgical outcomes. The robot's stability and tremor-free operation compared to human hands can extend practicing physicians' careers and expand the pool of surgeons capable of performing these procedures. Dishi is extending the platform to other ophthalmic conditions affecting billions of patients, including cataracts and glaucoma, and has established cooperation intentions with multiple ophthalmic biotech companies to help advance novel therapies such as gene therapy and cell therapy.
Additionally, the Dishi team identified that microsurgery often requires anastomosis of 0.3–0.8 millimeter lymphatic vessels, blood vessels, or nerves — with substantial unmet demand across ENT, lymphatic surgery, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, and other departments. These procedures are technically demanding and require highly skilled surgeons, with only a small number capable of performing them. To this end, Dishi Medical is also applying its high-precision super-micro manipulation underlying technology to its microsurgical robot in development, broadening the applications of microsurgery.
(A surgeon operating the Dishi robot for subretinal injection in a live rabbit)
(A surgeon operating the Dishi robot to peel a 20µm-thick egg membrane)
Dr. Cui Di, founder of Dishi Medical, stated: "Dishi Medical has nearly ten years of deep technical accumulation in microsurgery, with a complete suite of core technologies backed by independent intellectual property rights. We will continue to fully leverage our technical advantages to break through existing treatment bottlenecks and limits, helping physicians improve clinical outcomes for patients. At the same time, we are deeply grateful to Linear Capital and Hillhouse, as well as Shangcheng Medical International Innovation Center and the Hangzhou and Shangcheng district governments for their recognition of Dishi and the strong support they have provided for our development. We hope the Dishi team can work hand in hand with all of you to bring an innovative revolution to microsurgery."
Technical Director Dr. Zhou stated: "Micro-manipulation primarily operates at micron-level precision, at the boundary of human operational and perceptual limits, posing significant challenges to human capability. Robotic micro-manipulation can help humans better accomplish dexterous operations at micro-scales, with important applications in medicine, agriculture, and industry. We will continue to explore the boundaries of robotic micro-manipulation in collaboration with top international research institutions such as Zhejiang University and Technical University of Munich, providing better technical support for Dishi's development and product optimization."
Songyan Huang, Managing Director of Linear Capital, stated: "Intelligent robotics is a key focus area for Linear Capital, where we have already made investments in multiple companies. We have consistently sought companies that start from industry problems, feature original design, and demonstrate both technical and product innovation. Dishi substantially addresses work that physicians in microsurgery and ophthalmology cannot complete due to physiological limits, creating tremendous value for physicians, patients, and hospitals alike. The founding team has very long-term accumulation in this direction and is, in our view, the best team in this space. We are willing to support the company at the early stage and accompany its long-term development."
About Linear Capital
Founded in 2014, Linear Capital focuses on "frontier technology + industry" investments, namely frontier technologies represented by data intelligence, digital new infrastructure, next-generation robotics technology, and new technological transformations in traditional fields (such as biomedicine, materials, energy, etc.), applied across vertical industries to substantially improve industrial efficiency, empower solutions to pain point problems, and complete industrial upgrading — achieving excess returns in commercial value through substantial increases in industrial value. We insist on entering at the early stage and providing continuous support throughout the project lifecycle. Linear Capital currently manages ten funds with total AUM of approximately $2 billion, having made early-stage investments in over 120 entrepreneurial teams including Horizon Robotics, Kujiale, Sensors Data, Tezign, Agile Robots, Shushu Technology, Rokid, Guandata, and Douxiang Technology, with a combined portfolio valuation of approximately $20 billion.
About GL Ventures
GL Ventures is one of China's most active venture investment platforms, focused on value discovery and value creation for innovative companies, with particular attention to new technologies, new energy, new materials, and new consumption. Since its independent launch in 2020, we have been committed to providing systematic DVC (Deep Value Creation) services to support the long-term development of early-stage innovative enterprises.