36Kr Exclusive | "Kerry Medical" Completes Pre-A+ Round of Financing, with Luzhou State-owned Assets System Making Another Investment within Half a Year
36Kr Sichuan has learned that Chengdu Kairui Medical Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Kairui Medical") has announced the completion of its Pre-A+ round of financing. This round of investment was exclusively led by Huaxi Yinfeng Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huaxi Yinfeng"), a wholly-owned direct investment company of Huaxi Securities under Luzhou Laojiao Group. It is worth noting that this is an additional investment in "Kairui Medical" by the Luzhou state-owned asset system in a short period after the previous round of investment of tens of millions of yuan by Luzhou Shuanggang Industrial Investment and Development Co., Ltd. After completing this round of financing, the company's valuation has exceeded 250 million yuan.
Founded in 2022, "Kairui Medical" is a multi-modal humanoid medical robot enterprise dedicated to solving the pain points of repetitive and high-intensity work and uneven resource distribution in the medical field. It has products deployed in the fields of blood collection, ultrasound, and AI vision. Its core product is the Intelligent Blood Collection Robot (Series M). It is reported that the first product, the M1Pro, has completed clinical trials and is in the process of applying for a Class III medical device registration license. Meanwhile, the Portable Blood Collection Robot (M1mini) has also entered the R & D cycle.
Portable Blood Collection Robot (M1mini)
As the standard for clinical diagnosis, blood testing provides key evidence for more than 70% of medical decisions, making blood collection one of the most frequent and essential operations in the global medical system. Facing a huge global market space of over 200 billion yuan, the current blood collection field shows an obvious imbalance between supply and demand: on the one hand, clinics face the pain points of puncturing special blood vessels in infants and the elderly; on the other hand, the industry still completely relies on manual operations, with very few truly mature products and almost zero intelligent penetration rate.
"We chose this track based on a deep understanding of the industry's pain points and market opportunities. Due to the long registration cycle and high approval requirements for medical devices, there are significant time and qualification barriers in the industry, which provides a valuable window period for technological pioneers." Wang Yigang, the founder of "Kairui Medical", said: "With precise intelligent blood collection technology, we expect to improve the efficiency of blood collection from complex blood vessels and, to a certain extent, free nurses from repetitive work."
For users, "Kairui Medical"'s blood collection robot will reduce the pain of blood collection, with a faster and more stable puncture speed. First, place the arm in the designated position. The blood collection robot uses infrared technology for initial positioning to obtain the blood vessel information on the skin surface, then uses infrared to guide the ultrasound probe to fit the blood vessel to obtain three-dimensional depth information and confirm the puncture blood vessel. Through motion control, the blood collection needle is aimed at the blood vessel for precise puncture. The whole process only takes about 90 seconds.
Intelligent Blood Collection Robot M1Pro
"Precision" is the keyword for "Kairui Medical"'s blood collection robot. "The blood collection robot uses binocular infrared + ultrasound to obtain precise depth information, improving the precision to a higher order of magnitude and dimension. It uses a self-developed high-precision puncture module for large-scale dynamic planning of the puncture path to achieve sub-millimeter spatial puncture precision. By focusing on both positioning and puncturing, we strive to break through to a higher level of precision."
After consolidating the technical foundation of the intelligent blood collection robot, "Kairui Medical" is successfully expanding its core AI vision technology to multiple application scenarios. Among them, the S1 Scar Intelligent Detection System jointly developed with Beijing Barkang Hospital has entered the delivery stage. This product can conduct multi-dimensional quantitative evaluations of scars (including multiple indicators such as shape, blood flow, color difference, and elasticity) and assist doctors in monitoring the scar situation during the treatment process.
It is reported that Beijing Barkang Hospital specializes in the ablation of skin hyperplasia, skin tumors, and skin scars. To solve the pain point of disease course monitoring, it cooperated with "Kairui Medical" for customized development using vision technology and algorithms. The S1 Scar Intelligent Detection System can effectively track and trace the whole process of scar treatment, contributing to medical research and patient recovery.
Wang Yigang revealed that this round of financing will be mainly used for the implementation in hospital scenarios and the construction of clinical demonstration centers to accelerate data accumulation and product optimization. After the mass production of the blood collection robot products, they will be widely promoted at the grass - roots level in combination with in vitro diagnosis, with the expectation of creating a new and efficient medical scenario of 90 - second self - service blood collection + 10 - minute direct report issuance.
Different from products such as "pulse - feeling robots" and "massage robots" that have no wounds at all, the public may have more concerns about the blood collection scenario that requires puncturing. How to make people accept the emerging concept of "robot blood collection"? Wang Yigang said that for children who need blood collection, the robot can play cartoons they are interested in to distract their attention and complete the blood collection process smoothly. More importantly, the research results of "Kairui Medical" show that both adults and children generally think the pain is less after the first "robot blood collection", so they are willing to accept it after the first experience and will tell their relatives and friends about their real experience. "We have an improvement plan for the needle tip material and process. Combined with the precision of the robot, we plan to develop a 'painless needle' with almost zero pain to further improve the user's comfort. Of course, there will be professional staff to assist at the initial stage of implementation. If the user is really panicked about blood collection, the algorithm will make an intelligent decision to suggest manual blood collection. In addition, the product is equipped with an obvious emergency stop button to establish multiple safety guarantee measures."
Although there are several enterprises deploying in the field of blood collection robots in the market at present, the product path of "Kairui Medical" is significantly different from that of other participants. Wang Yigang emphasized: "We always put 'precision' at the top of our core technology. Especially in the full - age - range puncture applications from adults to minors, it shows stronger clinical adaptability and stability, providing a safer and more comfortable blood collection experience for different populations." In 2024, the relevant technological achievements and data of "Kairui Medical" were announced at the top international conference in the robot field, ICRA (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation), further verifying the reliability and advanced nature of its technology.
The person in charge of the investor, Huaxi Yinfeng, said: "We are optimistic about the broad prospects of intelligent puncture technology in the field of medical automation. As a high - frequency and essential clinical scenario, the intelligent transformation of blood collection not only helps to improve medical efficiency but also optimizes the patient experience, with significant social value and commercial potential. The field that 'Kairui Medical' focuses on represents an important direction of medical technology innovation. We look forward to jointly promoting technological R & D and scenario implementation through this round of cooperation and injecting new impetus into the construction of the smart medical ecosystem."
Image source: Kairui Medical
This article is from the WeChat public account "36Kr Sichuan". Author: 36Kr Sichuan. Republished by 36Kr with authorization.