Dexter at European Union

Distalmotion (founded 2012 in the Lausanne area of Switzerland as an EPFL spinout; private) makes Dexter, a hybrid laparoscopic surgical robot designed for cost-efficiency and operating-room integration that lets surgeons switch between robotic and manual laparoscopy within the same procedure. Dexter is a genuine master-controlled robotic manipulator that received its European CE mark in December 2020, with European market launch following in 2021, and then crossed the key US gating event with FDA De Novo marketing authorization in October 2024 for adult inguinal hernia repair, since expanded with two further US clearances covering cholecystectomy and gynecologic procedures including total benign hysterectomy.

The company reports nearly 3,000 patients treated across Europe and the US, raised $150 million in November 2025 to accelerate US expansion, and positions Dexter for ambulatory surgical centers as a cost-efficiency play. The registry records it at commercial maturity, solidly past its gating events and in early US scale-up, with a teleoperated master-slave baseline and no shipped autonomy or AI-assist feature.

One date-precision note: the CE mark is December 2020, while the 2021 figure sometimes cited refers to the European launch year. Exact installed-system and country counts are not verified for the private company, and the roughly 3,000-patients figure is company-sourced and plausible but not regulatory-audited.