Invuity, a Bay Area medtech that builds surgical tools to help illuminate a patient’s innards during an operation, just raised $20 million in equity. The new dollars will help Invuity up commercialization efforts across its broad range of, well, highly specialized specialized flashlights.
Devices like its Eikon illuminated retractor, for instance, let surgeons delve into deep, dark cavities through smaller incisions – rendering the operation less invasive because the procedure is more visible with more light.
The San Francisco Business Times profiled Invuity last year:
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
Invuity’s small devices actually are quite complex. Much of the eight years was spent on designers perfecting their design of the company’s illuminating clips, which snap onto the retractors that snake through tissue.
“It’s like trying to see in a dark, wet, velvet environment,” [President and CEO Philip] Sawyer said.
Not only do Invuity’s retractors and lights need to push through the darkness, he said, but blaze a path without literally blazing: no heat, shadows, no glare.
“Doctors are saying they’re seeing structures they haven’t seen before,” said Sawyer, who joined the company four years ago, following stints at Fusion Medical Technologies and Stryker Corp., a medical device giant known for hitting at least 20 percent year-over-year revenue growth since 1977.
The round was led by Wellington Management Company, though new board member Greg Lucier – the former CEO of Life Technologies – also joined the investment pool. Prior investors that participated in this round include HealthCare Royalty Partners, Valence Life Sciences, InterWest Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
