Inner Logic has raised $11.5 million in seed funding to develop simulation and data infrastructure for designing, testing and validating procedural medical devices. General Catalyst and Bison Ventures co-led the round. J2VP, Defined, PTX, Valia Ventures, Page One, Alumni Ventures and Flare also participated. Inner Logic was previously known as Semaphor.
The Baltimore-based company enables medical device manufacturers to test products across thousands of virtual patients and procedures before clinical deployment. Its platform is intended to supplement physical testing conducted through prototypes, cadaver laboratories and animal studies.
Physical testing can be expensive and may cover only a limited range of anatomy, imaging conditions and procedural complications. Inner Logic uses virtual patients built from real clinical and procedural data to evaluate how devices may perform across a broader population.
For conventional devices such as heart valves and catheters, manufacturers can use the platform to iterate on designs before committing to additional physical testing. The same infrastructure is being developed to support intelligent and autonomous surgical systems.
Autonomous procedural technology requires developers to evaluate a wide range of anatomical variations, operating conditions and potential failures. Inner Logic believes simulation can provide the scale needed to train systems and produce evidence supporting their safety and performance.
The company said its team previously trained artificial intelligence algorithms entirely in simulation for an orthopedic trauma application and successfully deployed them on physical hardware and patient anatomy. Its researchers also completed critical steps of gallbladder removal in a live animal model without surgeon intervention.
These demonstrations remain research milestones rather than evidence that fully autonomous surgery is ready for routine clinical use. Additional development, validation, regulatory review and clinical evidence would be required before autonomous systems could be broadly deployed for patient care.
Inner Logic was co-founded by CEO Dr. Tito Porras, CTO Dr. Mathias Unberath and Chief Robotics Officer Dr. Axel Krieger. The founders collectively have authored more than 400 peer-reviewed publications and are named inventors on over 40 patents.
Porras left his neurosurgery residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital to build the company. Unberath is a computer vision and simulation researcher at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, while Krieger is an associate professor whose research includes autonomous robotic surgery.
Inner Logic plans to use the financing to expand its platform and work with medical device companies developing conventional, intelligent and autonomous procedural systems.
KEY QUOTES:
“Surgery is on the same path as autonomous driving, which became real once the industry built the simulation and data systems to show a car could drive itself.”
“At Inner Logic, we are building that layer for all of procedural medicine starting with the way devices are designed and tested. When device makers can develop and prove intelligent systems this way, the quality of a patient’s care stops depending on which hospital they can access or which surgeon is on call.”
Dr. Tito Porras, Co-Founder and CEO of Inner Logic
“The Inner Logic team’s research has shown that procedural autonomy isn’t a distant vision, it’s nearly here. But getting there requires a fundamental shift: moving development, testing, and evidence generation in silico.”
“We believe the team’s thought leadership at the intersection of AI, medicine, and robotics make them the right ones to build that infrastructure for the industry.”
Reva Nohria, Partner at General Catalyst
“Inner Logic has the rare combination of both extreme technical talent in world leading robotics and physical AI models, and deep surgical knowledge.”
“Hardware advancements enabled non-incremental improvements in surgery over the last two decades yet hardware improvement is becoming incremental. Embedded intelligence will bring the next wave of fundamental improvements and Inner Logic is leading the way in procedural intelligence.”
Caleb Appleton, Partner at Bison Ventures
