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Catching up with Neocis’ Alon Mozes: A Miami success story is unfolding

Nancy Dahlberg
Nancy Dahlberg
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The latest news: The Miami dental robotics startup will soon have a 38,000-square-foot HQ in Wynwood, tripling its current space.

There are easier entrepreneurial roads to take than pioneering robot-assisted dental implant surgery, but Miami-based startup Neocis is today the leader in the field. CEO Alon Mozes and his team developed the first and only FDA-cleared robot, Yomi,  that is certainly up to the task, having placed more than 10,000 dental implants to date.

The last time we checked in with Mozes, Neocis had just raises a $72 million Series D round  and was poised to put that money to work on commercialization. This week he is announcing that Neocis has signed a new lease for 38,000 square feet of office space at 545wyn in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, with a planned move-in this fall after buildout.

545wyn

Currently, the 140-employee company is based in two office spaces in Miami area, one for engineering and administration functions and a warehouse for manufacturing and quality assurance. “That separation is an impediment to being able to move faster and build really high quality product at a really very fast pace,” Mozes said.

The new HQ will also be triple the size of the two current spaces together, which will come in handy because Mozes projects the team will be 200-strong by the end of the year. To put that growth in perspective, in 2016, the team was 10, in 2020 the count was up to 70, and now double that, Mozes said.

“The new officers will be an opportunity to bring all those departments under one roof. So for example, we’ll have engineering and manufacturing that really work well when they’re under the same roof and can work together.”

Since closing that round of funding in 2020, Neocis hired a Chief Commercial Officer, Wayne Craig, who has deep background in dental and robotic surgery. Craig has now put in place a fully built out sales team selling robots and managing the accounts to help drive utilization. “We have a lot of practices that now they won’t do an implant procedure without our robot,” Mozes said.

To date, over 140 dental surgerons have used Yomi to place more than 10,000 implants.

Yomi allows dentists to precisely pre-plan the dental implant procedure and then guides their hand during the surgery according to the pre-operative plan by using haptic robotic feedback. Because of the increased accuracy and digital planning provided by Yomi, dentists can operate with a smaller incision. For patients, that means less pain and faster recoveries. 

Neocis’ Yomi

“Passing that 10,000 implant mark is a sign that we’re transitioning from that early-stage startup to a real growth-stage company with various successful commercial efforts,” Mozes said. What’s more, R&D is full-speed ahead with efforts such as adding indications for more complicated procedures such as so-called full arch replacements, he added.

“We’re never just sitting back and resting. We’re always making the system better, making it easier to use, and expanding its functionality so it can do more and more in the practices.”

Neocis, co-founded by Mozes and Juan Salcedo, is a very Miami story. Mozes grew up in South Florida, and after getting his bachelor’s and master’s in engineering at MIT, he got his start in Silicon Valley working for an innovator in special effects for sports broadcasts. In 2004, he returned to Miami to study biomedical engineering at the University of Miami, earning his Ph.D. In 2005, Mozes became one of the first 20 employees at Mako Surgical, working there through Mako’s IPO.

Mozes and Salcedo, both engineers who met while working at Mako, had been working on their idea for Neocis on the side, and in 2012 they landed their first angel money from robotics pioneer Fred Moll. They are part of a network of former Mako leaders and employees who have gone on to form or grow other ventures in South Florida, including Magic Leap, OrthoSensor, Insightec and DermaSensor.

What’s ahead for Neocis? Continued growth on the sales front. As for R&D, the team has more than 40 world-class engineers now. “We’re going to keep accelerating on creating new indications and new value, which in turn creates that flywheel effect and helps sell more systems.”

Neocis is hiring for almost every department, including engineering, product management, quality assurance, regulatory affairs,  and manufacturing.

Mozes said Neocis is considering raising a Series E. So far, Neocis has raised $122.9 million, according to Crunchbase.

Follow Nancy Dahlberg on Twitter @ndahlberg and email her at [email protected]

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Nancy Dahlberg
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