Dexter

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.

Dexter is listed at $500,000 to $1,000,000 on the DEPLOY registry. This is an analyst estimate, not an official price.

Yes. Dexter is independently verified in real-world operation on the DEPLOY registry, confirmed at named deployment sites with primary sources: not a concept, render, or demo-only.

Not verified as fully autonomous. Dexter's capabilities on the DEPLOY registry are recorded as teleoperated-assisted, demonstrated-only, or vendor claims (Assists surgery), not independently confirmed to run without a human in the loop.

Dexter is made by Distalmotion, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 2012.

1 verified deployment of Dexter is on the DEPLOY registry, including at European Union.

Dexter is in pilot deployments with named customers and is not yet broadly for sale.

Dexter has 2 regulatory records on the DEPLOY registry: FDA 510(k) clearance (K251197), cleared; FDA De Novo authorization, cleared. See the Regulatory filings section for each agency source.

On the DEPLOY registry, comparable surgical robots to Dexter include da Vinci (and Ion), Edge Multi-Port Surgical Robot, Edison Histotripsy System, Stryker Mako SmartRobotics.

Dexter and da Vinci (and Ion) (Intuitive Surgical · 15 deployments) are both surgical robots on the DEPLOY registry. Dexter has 1 verified deployment on record. Compare both records for specs, safety, deployments, and verified-vs-claimed autonomy.

On DEPLOY's intelligence score, which blends verified deployments, safety, adoption, media, and IP signals, Dexter ranks in roughly the top 42% of surgical models tracked by the registry.

Dexter is at the pilot stage on the DEPLOY maturity ladder (research, prototype, pilot, commercial, production). Pilot stage means at least one named-customer trial deployment is verified.

Dexter has 1 active incident on record in the DEPLOY registry. 1 incident on record (1 minor). Most recent: Jun 2026. Retracted incidents are excluded from this count.

The Distalmotion Dexter is a soft tissue surgical robot that simplifies operations to make wristed robotics more accessible. It received FDA marketing authorization (De Novo) in October 2024. Dexter is designed to be the 'surgeon's robot' that provides the physician complete control of the procedure. Distalmotion is expanding indications in uro-gynecology.