China’s medical robotics sector in 2025 delivered at least eight notable NMPA Class III approvals, logged over $370 million in headline funding rounds, and shipped surgical robots to installations in nearly 40 countries. Four themes defined the year: MicroPort MedBot added three new NMPA approvals to reach a seven-product portfolio; the country approved its first domestically developed coronary interventional robot; a new generation of compact and single-port systems earned both Chinese and European regulatory clearance; and Chinese manufacturers scaled international commercialization, with overseas orders for endoscopic surgical robots surpassing domestic da Vinci installations in H1 2025 according to VCBeat Health’s analysis. The regulatory environment also shifted, with the NMPA issuing a dedicated high-end medical device support policy that names surgical robots as a priority category.
MicroPort MedBot: Three Approvals, One Satellite Surgery
MicroPort MedBot entered 2025 already holding approvals for four surgical robot products. It ended the year with seven, adding three new NMPA clearances within twelve months.
Toumai SP single-port robot (March 2025). On March 20, the NMPA issued registration number 20253010347 for the Toumai SP laparoscopic surgical robot. The system uses a 2.5 cm umbilical incision to insert three snake-shaped instruments and a 3D high-definition flexible endoscope simultaneously, supported by crossed dual C-arm architecture for full abdominal and pelvic coverage. It marks the company’s fifth approved platform and adds urology, general surgery, and gynecology indications in single-port configuration.
Toumai Tele-Robotic System — commercial remote surgery clearance (May 2025). On May 20, the NMPA approved the Toumai Tele-Robotic Surgical System for commercial clinical use across all departments — making it, according to MicroPort MedBot, the world’s first tele-operated surgical robot authorized for routine commercial practice rather than research trials. The system supports 5G, broadband, dedicated fiber, and satellite links, with bidirectional latency under 50 ms for inter-provincial procedures.
On April 22 — weeks before the formal clearance, during a controlled clinical program — Toumai enabled five simultaneous telesurgeries across five Chinese hospitals from a single remote console at Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai. Procedures covered pancreatic, hepatic, urological, gastrointestinal, and biliary cases, with patients in Fujian, Yunnan, Jiangxi, Hainan, and Shanghai.
Then on July 2–3, Professor Rong Liu of the Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery department completed two liver tumor resections from Xiong’an New Area, Hebei — relayed through a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite link with one-way latency under 60 ms. MicroPort MedBot described this as the world’s first remote robotic surgery conducted via LEO satellite, adding LEO to the system’s existing GEO, 5G, and fiber capabilities. Both patients were discharged the next day.
By October 2025, cumulative global commercial orders for the Toumai laparoscopic robot line reached 100 units; by December, the count exceeded 160 — with installations in nearly 40 countries across Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
UniPath bronchoscopic robot (December 2025). In late December, the NMPA approved the UniPath Electronic Bronchoscopic Surgical Robotic System for early-stage diagnosis and treatment of deep peripheral pulmonary lesions. UniPath navigates via natural body pathways using an ultra-slim snake-like robotic catheter, integrating closed-loop control and intelligent path planning. The approval brings MicroPort MedBot’s portfolio to seven products across five surgical specialties — laparoscopic, orthopedic, endovascular, single-port, telesurgical, dental navigation, and now bronchoscopic.
Vascular Interventional: A Second Domestic Player Emerges
China’s coronary interventional robotics market had a single approved platform entering 2025: the R-ONE, a French-designed system distributed in China by the Cathbot joint venture. Five Shanghai hospitals began active R-ONE use this year.
On March 21, 2025, that changed. The NMPA approved the ETcath® Interventional Surgery Assistance System, developed by Beijing WeMed Medical Technology Co., Ltd., after eight years of development and a prospective randomized controlled trial across five Grade A tertiary hospitals. ETcath is China’s first fully domestically developed robot for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).
Its distinguishing feature is force feedback: proprietary sensors can detect resistance as subtle as 0.01 newtons during catheter navigation, relaying tactile information to the operating surgeon — a capability that WeMed described as the world’s first of its kind in an interventional robot. The system also allows operators to work in standard clothing rather than lead aprons, removing a significant occupational hazard for high-volume interventional cardiologists.
The approval followed a prospective RCT — a higher evidence bar than most medical device approvals require — and WeMed reported a 100% procedural success rate across its clinical cohort. The ETcath product page is now live in our database.
See also: Vascular Interventional Robots hub for an overview of China’s growing field in this category.
Orthopedic Robotics: Scale and a Miniature Newcomer
Tinavi and its TiRobot II platform reached an operational milestone in Q1 2025: cumulative cases exceeded 110,000 across 200+ medical institutions in all 31 Chinese provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, according to Tinavi. The system covers spine, joint replacement, and trauma surgery on a single device. Tinavi reported triple-digit year-on-year growth in its orthopedic surgical navigation segment in H1 2025.
On the international side, Tinavi signed an exclusive distribution agreement with France-based IMPLANET in September 2025 for the TiRobot® spine surgery system, confirming its entry into the EU market following CE MDR certification in 2024.
A different kind of approval came for spinal robotics in mid-2025: Sino-European MicroRobotics (SEMR) — a joint venture between Austria’s Interventional Systems and Chinese firm HICREN — received NMPA Class III clearance for the Intelligent SpinePecker, a miniature spinal surgical navigation and positioning system. The robotic arm weighs 1.63 kg and the entire system fits on a 0.32 m² console. Positioning accuracy is 0.2 mm, and single pedicle screw placement takes approximately one minute, according to the developers. The device entered the NMPA’s Innovative Medical Device Green Channel in February 2024 and launched commercially in September 2025. Hurwa distributes related orthopedic navigation technology in mainland China.
See the Surgical Robots hub for a full list of NMPA-cleared orthopedic platforms.
Single-Port and CE Expansion: Surgerii Raises $100M
Beijing Surgerii Robotics had a defining year. In August 2025, its SHURUI single-port endoscopic surgical robot received CE certification under the EU MDR, covering urology, gynecology, general surgery, and thoracic surgery for both adult and pediatric patients. The company described SHURUI as the only CE-certified single-port robot approved for pediatric use and the first Chinese surgical robot certified across all patient age groups.
That certification was followed within months by a $100 million Series D financing round, led by Loyal Valley Capital, with participation from Shanghai Healthcare Capital, V Star Capital, DNV Capital, and Hefei Industrial Investment. The company said proceeds would fund global commercialization of SHURUI and successor product development. As of late 2025, Surgerii had clinical cooperation with over 70 Grade A tertiary hospitals in China and had performed more than 3,000 surgeries domestically.
SHURUI does not yet have FDA clearance and Surgerii has not filed for a US listing.
International Expansion: From Demonstration to Commercial Orders
The most consequential shift in 2025 was not regulatory but commercial: Chinese surgical robots moved from conference demonstrations to batch delivery in overseas markets.
Overseas orders for Chinese endoscopic surgical robots exceeded 43 units in H1 2025 — surpassing da Vinci installations in China during the same six-month window, according to VCBeat Health’s analysis. Leading companies now derive close to 20% of revenue from overseas markets.
Several specific commercial milestones:
Edge Medical: The Shenzhen-based maker of multi-port, single-port, and bronchoscopic robots secured 25 commercial orders across nearly 20 countries in H1 2025 per the company, a result fast enough for the Temasek-backed company to confidentially file for a Hong Kong IPO in August. The listing launched in late December, with trading scheduled for early January 2026.
Sagebot (KangDuo SR2000): The Harbin-based maker entered batch delivery for orders in Ecuador, Indonesia, and Azerbaijan, and in July performed what it described as the world’s first multinational dual-console, triple-point collaborative remote surgery during the SRS 2025 Annual Meeting in Strasbourg. In December, the KangDuo system received CE MDR certification.
MicroPort MedBot: Total cumulative orders across its laparoscopic, orthopedic, and endovascular lines exceeded 170 units with commercial installations in nearly 40 countries.
Exports of Chinese surgical robots as a category grew sharply year-on-year in 2025 according to industry tracking, driven by Belt and Road procurement relationships and growing demand in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East for cost-competitive robotic surgery alternatives to da Vinci.
Funding: Two Large Rounds in a Tighter Market
After a contraction period in recent years, 2025 showed selective recovery with two outsized rounds.
Cornerstone Robotics closed two rounds in 2025. In January, the Hong Kong-based developer of the Sentire autonomous endoscopic platform raised $70 million in Series C financing, led by EQT, with Qiming Venture Partners and Hong Kong’s Innovation and Technology Venture Fund participating. By November, the company closed a second round of approximately $200 million, with Hong Kong Investment Corporation (HKIC) joining as a strategic investor. Total 2025 funding for Cornerstone: ~$270 million. The company operates manufacturing in Shenzhen’s Longhua district and has deployed the Sentire system across hospitals in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Europe.
Surgerii Robotics raised $100 million in Series D (see section above).
Both rounds were directed at international commercialization rather than domestic capacity — a signal that sophisticated investors view China’s home market as established ground and overseas markets as the next growth vector.
Regulatory Shift: NMPA Formalizes Support for Medical Robots
On July 3/July 9, 2025, the NMPA published Announcement No. 63: Measures to Optimize Whole Life-Cycle Regulation in Support of the Innovative Development of High-End Medical Devices. Surgical and rehabilitation robots are explicitly named as priority categories. Ten specific measures cover faster pre-market review, lifecycle monitoring simplification, and accelerated post-market change procedures.
Complementing this, the NMPA reported that 39 devices received Green Channel approval in H1 2025 under the Special Review Procedure for Innovative Medical Devices — the expedited pathway that the Intelligent SpinePecker used. The NMPA also announced plans to formalize classification guidelines and naming standards for medical robots, which have been inconsistently categorized across submissions.
On the reimbursement side, the National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) released its DRG/DIP 2.0 healthcare payment framework in August 2025, with full implementation targeting all inpatient institutions by year-end. The framework includes an exception mechanism allowing up to 5% of DRG cases to apply for supplementary payment when procedures involve new technologies — a provision applicable to robotic surgery. Whether individual provinces expand this exception coverage for robot-assisted cases will be one of the critical policy watchpoints in 2026.
Patterns and Outlook
Five patterns stand out from the 2025 data:
Portfolio depth over single-product bets. The most-watched company story was MicroPort MedBot’s expansion to seven approved platforms. This is a different competitive strategy than the da Vinci model (one platform, multiple generations) — and it allows MedBot to approach hospital customers as a full-spectrum supplier rather than a specialty vendor.
Category firsts accelerating. Three “first domestic” approvals in a single year — ETcath (coronary), UniPath (bronchoscopic for MedBot), SpinePecker (miniature spinal) — signal that the NMPA’s Green Channel is functioning as intended. More categories remain open: endovascular neurovascular intervention, autonomous ophthalmology, and AI-guided radiotherapy positioning all have active Chinese programs.
CE MDR as the gateway to global credibility. Surgerii, Sagebot, and Tinavi all obtained or extended CE MDR certification in 2025. The MDR is a harder standard than the legacy CE MDD, and certification under it is increasingly treated by international hospitals as a minimum bar for procurement consideration.
Hong Kong as the IPO venue of choice. Edge Medical’s late-2025 listing followed a pattern established across the broader Chinese MedTech sector: Hong Kong’s Chapter 18A biotech listing rules and its dual-currency infrastructure make it a practical path for pre-profit medical device companies with international aspirations. More Chinese surgical robot companies are expected to follow.
Reimbursement remains the domestic ceiling. Strong domestic demand for robotic surgery exists, but without broader insurance coverage for robot-assisted procedures, case volumes are constrained by out-of-pocket patient payments. The DRG/DIP exception mechanism is a step forward, but provincial implementation will take time. This structural constraint partly explains why companies are pivoting internationally even while the domestic market is large and underserved.
For 2026, the category to watch is flexible robotic bronchoscopy — both MicroPort MedBot (UniPath) and Edge Medical now hold approvals in this space, and early-stage lung cancer detection is a high-volume clinical need in China. Coronary intervention robotics will also see competitive pressure as ETcath begins commercial deployment against the established R-ONE/Cathbot distribution network.
This year-in-review is curated from Chinese-language industry coverage and company announcements. Primary sources are cited in the frontmatter. For full profiles of all companies mentioned, browse the Companies database. For category overviews, see the Category Hubs.