AI Surgical Robot Startup 'Rosota' Raises 1.5 Billion Won in Seed Funding

FuturePlay Leads Investment
with Schmidt and ZDVC Participating

Rosota, a spin-off startup from the MediSC Lab of the Department of Convergence Medicine at Seoul National University Hospital, announced on July 2 that it has raised 1.5 billion won in seed funding. FuturePlay served as the lead investor, with Schmidt and ZDVentures(ZDVC) participating as co-investors.

Rosota is a startup developing AI-powered surgical robots based on surgical data. Its goal is to create an "AI-native surgical robot" that not only replaces the hands of a surgeon but also understands and learns from surgical situations, providing real-time support for surgeons' decisions. Most surgical robots currently available in the global market are limited to remote control systems in which the surgeon directly operates the robot.

The company's core technology is its surgical data infrastructure. To overcome the biggest bottleneck in AI surgical robot development—securing high-quality data—Rosota has built a proprietary data pipeline that collects videos, instrument movements, and various sensor data generated during surgery in real time, then anonymizes and de-identifies this information before linking it to AI learning.

Rosota originated from the MediSC Lab of the Department of Convergence Medicine at Seoul National University Hospital. CEO Seo Yechan, a graduate of Seoul National University College of Medicine, and co-founders Choi Minwoo and Lee Dongho, who both graduated from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Seoul National University, have long collaborated on research into surgical robotics and artificial intelligence.

CEO Seo graduated at the top of his class in mathematics and science from Gyeonggi Science High School, won an award as a national representative in the International Mathematical Modeling Challenge (IMMC), and conducted research on surgical robotics, artificial intelligence, and BCI at the Department of Convergence Medicine while attending medical school. He later co-authored a paper as first author on neurosurgical AI research in the international SCI journal 'BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making,' and received the Future Talent Award from Seoul National University College of Medicine in 2024.

CEO Seo stated, "Rosota's goal is to build an environment where AI, based on surgical data infrastructure, amplifies the capabilities of surgeons so that more patients can receive high-quality surgery anywhere in the world."

Aram Jeon, Head of Investment Division 2 at FuturePlay, who led the investment, said, "The market penetration of leading global surgical robot companies is not as high as we might think. Surgical automation is a field that is only beginning to be explored. In order to expand the scope of automation, surgical data from Korea's world-class medical professionals must be accumulated, and since this is directly tied to data sovereignty, a domestic sovereign player is essential." She added, "We expect the Rosota team, which has worked closely with Seoul National University Hospital for a long time, to fulfill this role."

Rosota plans to use this investment to secure key research and development personnel, further advance its surgical data collection devices, develop AI models, and expand its clinical collaboration network.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.