Shortly after welcoming a new CEO, robot developer Vicarious Surgical reported that it will be delaying the clinical trials planned for its minimally invasive platform to make time for a full technical review of the system.
Vicarious appointed Stephen From as its new chief last week, with the company’s previous CEO and co-founder, Adam Sachs, moving into the role of president. From formerly led Aruna Bio, a developer of biologic therapies for neurological conditions such as stroke and traumatic brain injuries as well as ALS. He also led Kiora Pharmaceuticals, previously known as EyeGate.
The C-suite change comes at a pivotal time for Vicarious, which has been working on its single-port surgical system that delivers two robotic arms and a virtual reality camera fully inside the patient to conduct its operation.
During the company’s second-quarter earnings report this week, From said that Vicarious will first work toward finishing the design of its platform before launching human studies—which previously had a goal set for the end of this year.
“My direction to the team is that the best use of company resources is to focus on completing a fully integrated, production-equivalent system—enabling design lock, and initiating full system verification and validation,” From said on a call with investors. “This will be our primary focus until completion, with our first clinical patients to follow design lock.”
“Through testing conducted during our ongoing build, in preparation for our first clinical-use trial, it became clear that proceeding now would require using a nonproduction-equivalent system,” he added. “While such a trial could provide some insights, it would divert our limited resources away from the higher-priority goal of finalizing a production-equivalent system.”
From also said the company will be conducting “a deep dive” into every aspect of the device through an assessment he expects will take four to six weeks. “At that point, I expect to have greater clarity on our development status, timing to complete system integration, and readiness to initiate full system verification,” he said.
Vicarious’ chief financial officer, Sarah Romano—who joined the company in April and also previously held the same title at Kiora—said the delay and the assessment would not result in major changes to the 2025 budget. Romano also pegged Vicarious’ full-year burn rate at about $50 million.
The company reported $13.5 million in operating expenses for the second quarter, down 24% compared to the $17.7 million seen during the same period last year. That included about $9 million in R&D expenses.
Vicarious previously set back its development timeline in late 2023, alongside separate layoffs that year affecting a total of about 100 employees.