ByAmy Feldman,
Forbes Staff.
r. Fred Moll left the practice of medicine more than four decades ago. But he’s responsible for some 3 million surgeries a year, done by robots that he helped invent as the cofounder of Intuitive Surgical, the leader in robotic surgeries with more than 10,000 machines deployed and $8.4 billion in 2024 revenue.
Now, three decades after its founding and nearly 25 years since he departed Intuitive to start more companies, Moll has plowed around $100 million of his own funds into the next generation of surgical robotics startups. Colonoscopies. Cataract surgeries. Heart-valve replacements. One day, he’s betting these and a slew of other medical procedures will be performed by robots, improved over time by AI that analyzes what’s worked and what hasn’t in similar situations in the past. The goal is to bring the best medical care to everyone, whether they’re in New York or Nagpur.
“I’ve spent my career watching other people do surgery. The difference between a good surgeon and an average surgeon is massive,” Moll, 73, told Forbes. “My ambition is that the robot can do procedures that people struggle with. Its impact is to raise the level of capability of average surgeons to very good surgeons in procedures that not everyone is good at.”
