Inner Logic, a Baltimore startup building the software foundation for autonomous surgery, has raised $11.5 million in seed funding to help medical device companies develop and validate intelligent surgical systems in virtual environments before they ever reach a patient.
The round was co-led by General Catalyst and Bison Ventures, with participation from J2 Ventures, Defined, PTX, Valia Ventures, Page One, Alumni Ventures, and Flare. The company, formerly known as Semaphor, wants to change how surgical devices are developed by replacing much of today’s costly physical testing with AI-driven simulation built on real clinical data.
The idea borrows from a playbook that transformed another safety-critical industry. Autonomous vehicles did not become practical until automakers built massive simulation platforms that allowed software to learn from millions of virtual miles before heading onto public roads. Inner Logic believes surgery is reaching a similar turning point.
“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,” said Tito Porras, MD, co-founder and CEO of Inner Logic.
Today’s medical devices are still developed through a lengthy process of building prototypes, testing them in cadaver labs or animal studies, collecting data, making changes, and repeating the cycle. Each round is expensive, takes time, and covers only a small portion of the patient population a device will eventually serve.
Inner Logic wants to move much of that work into software. Its platform lets manufacturers test devices across thousands of virtual patients generated from real procedural and clinical data. Engineers can explore far more anatomical variations, imaging conditions, and failure scenarios than traditional testing methods allow before committing to physical studies.
The company says this approach serves two purposes. For conventional devices such as heart valves and catheters, it speeds up design and validation. For AI-powered surgical systems that make decisions during procedures, large-scale simulation becomes a key step for training and evaluating performance before entering clinical settings.
The startup was founded by a team with deep ties to Johns Hopkins. CEO Tito Porras left his neurosurgery residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital to start the company. He is joined by CTO Mathias Unberath, an expert in computer vision and surgical simulation at Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, and Chief Robotics Officer Axel Krieger, whose research team performed the first autonomous laparoscopic surgery in a live animal. Collectively, the founders have authored more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and hold more than 40 patents.
The technology has already produced early technical milestones. Inner Logic said it trained orthopedic trauma AI models entirely inside its simulation platform before deploying them on real hardware and patient anatomy. The company also completed key portions of gallbladder removal in a live animal without surgeon intervention, offering an early demonstration of what autonomous procedural systems could accomplish.
General Catalyst believes that progress signals a broader shift in medical technology.
“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,” said Reva Nohria, Partner at General Catalyst.
Bison Ventures sees embedded intelligence becoming the next major leap for surgical technology after years of advances driven largely by hardware.
“Inner Logic has the rare combination of both extreme technical talent in world leading robotics and physical AI models, and deep surgical knowledge,” said Caleb Appleton, Partner at Bison Ventures. “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.”
Autonomous surgery is still in its early stages, with technical, regulatory, and clinical hurdles ahead. Still, investors are placing bigger bets on the software infrastructure needed to train, test, and validate intelligent medical devices. Inner Logic is betting that simulation, much like it did for self-driving cars, will become a standard part of how the next generation of surgical systems reaches the operating room.
