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Neocis raises additional $20M in mission to revolutionize dental surgery through robotics

Nancy Dahlberg
Nancy Dahlberg
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By Nancy Dahlberg

Neocis created and sells Yomi, dentistry’s first and only robotic surgical system cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Yomi platform allows dentists to precisely pre-plan the dental implant procedure and then guides their hand during the surgery according to the pre-operative plan. 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.

To date, Neocis’s Yomi has assisted in 40,000 implants. That’s up from 20,000 just 14 months ago. The company says a dental implant is placed with Yomi approximately every six minutes.

Venture capitalists are taking notice. “Robotics and AI are changing the face of dentistry, enabling innovations that increase doctor efficiency and help them improve the quality of life for their patients,” says Mohamed “Sid” Siddeek, corporate vice president and head of NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm. “Neocis is transforming dental implant procedures, demonstrating the benefits of robotics and AI in healthcare.”

Today, Neocis, the global leader in robot-assisted dental implant surgery based in Miami, announced that it has raised $20 million in additional financing from NVentures and  Mirae Asset Capital/Mirae Asset Venture Investment, which invests in growth-stage healthcare and technology businesses.

Neocis is one of the successful scaleup companies that is making healthcare technology one of South Florida’s most active sectors for venture capital. To date,  the company has raised about $180 million from investors that also include Intuitive Ventures, DFJ Growth, Mithril Capital Management, Norwest Venture Partners, Vivo Capital, Section 32, surgical robotics pioneer Fred Moll, and others.

“The latest investment is a testament to our growth as a company and how far dental robotics has come since the first Yomi systems were installed. This funding positions us for continued success in the market and will help us drive meaningful innovation in implant dentistry,” says Neocis co-founder and CEO Alon Mozes.

Alon Mozes, CEO and co-founder of Neocis

In an interview with Refresh Miami, Mozes said the additional funding will help his team to expand commercial efforts  – selling more robots and ensuring customers have great experiences – and to fuel their innovation pipeline. “We have some of the world’s best engineers and we have a lot of opportunity to continue to expand indications for the platform to address improvements in the dental implant workflow and potentially other procedures adjacent to dental implants,” Mozes adds.

Neocis today is a team of 140, most of whom work at the Miami office. The company has so far installed about 200 robots across the country. In the past year, Neocis achieved its 16th FDA clearance, one that gives Yomi a critical advantage, Mozes explains.  “There’s a substantial number of patients who need essentially a full arch of implants meaning they’re either entirely toothless, upper or lower or both, or the teeth they have are all going to have to be removed. That’s a particularly challenging case, and a particularly expensive case and high revenue case for the dentist so it’s really important that they get it right. The Yomi system helps make sure they get it right – they get the accuracy, they can get solid results and faster than they normally would in a traditional method.”

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, he became one of the first 20 employees at Mako Surgical, working there through Mako’s 2008 IPO. Mozes and his Neocis co-founder Juan Salcedo, both engineers who met while working at Mako, are part of a network of former Mako employees who have gone on to form or grow other ventures in South Florida, including Magic Leap, OrthoSensor, Insightec and DermaSensor.

Last summer, Neocis’ employees moved into a new HQ,  38,000 square feet of office space at 545wyn in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood that is triple the size of their former spaces.

 “It’s stunning, but  it’s not just a pretty office,” Mozes says. “Now we have manufacturing, engineering, quality and all the departments under one roof. We get a lot more efficiency and productivity. Everyone gets to work together. Any problems get solved quickly with really great collaboration between the teams.”

Hiring? “We’re always considering bringing the best and brightest on board,” the CEO adds.

What’s next? “We see an opportunity to address the entire workflow end to end so we can help [dental surgeons] with their image analysis and surgical planning and restorative planning, we will help them with the robot during surgery,” Mozes explains. “Ultimately, they’ll be able to restore teeth same day, using all the software planning they have developed in our software. So we’re really becoming a central ecosystem in the dental office.”

This story has been updated.

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