Robeauté's EIC Accelerator Microrobot Aims for First Patients

Neurosurgical tools move in straight lines. To take a sample from a tumour deep in the brain, a surgeon pushes a rigid needle along the safest straight path, and some tumour sites cannot be reached that way, as the EIC project puts it. Robeauté, a Paris company founded in 2017, is building a self-propelled microrobot, about the size of a grain of rice, that travels through brain tissue along a curved path to the tumour and takes the biopsy there.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project, SmartMicroBiopsy, at its October 2024 cut-off for blended finance, and CORDIS records a grant of €2,496,930.63 from July 2025 to June 2027 to prepare first-in-human and pivotal trials. In January 2025 Robeauté had raised $28 million. By January 2026 it had opened a US subsidiary and set the end of 2026 as the target for its first patient.

A space roboticist turned to the brain

Founder Bertrand Duplat spent more than 30 years in robotics, including at McGill University and the European Space Agency, and earlier founded the 3D software company Virtools, which Dassault Systèmes acquired, according to tech.eu. His mother's glioblastoma diagnosis brought him to medicine. Co-founder Joana Cartocci runs operations. The French register lists Robeauté from April 2017, with Duplat as president, Cartocci as managing director, and Filip Dames and Ian Hogarth among its officers.

In January 2025 the company raised $28 million led by Plural, Cherry Ventures and Kindred Ventures, with LocalGlobe, Think.Health, earlier investor APEX Ventures and a strategic investment from Brainlab, tech.eu reported. The money was for further development, human trials from 2026 and a US operation. Robeauté had then worked on the technology for about eight years and was testing the robot as a biopsy tool in animals.

SmartMicroBiopsy

The EIC project is to develop the self-propelled robot for "in vivo intracerebral 3D navigation" and carry out first-in-human and pivotal trials, starting with tumours that are hard to reach or need repeated sampling: paediatric brainstem tumours, recurrent tumours, primary tumours that need full profiling, and metastases that resist standard treatment. CORDIS puts these niches at a potential €0.3 billion market in the United States and Europe and lists 54 patent filings. The project page shows no periodic report yet.

1. Microrobot for brain biopsyAnimal stageTested as a biopsy tool in animals, per January 2025 reporting; no results published.
2. Regulatory pathWith the FDAStrategy co-developed with the FDA; US subsidiary opened.
3. First-in-human trialNot yetTargeted for the end of 2026.
4. Pivotal trialToo earlyThe project runs to June 2027.

The United States first

Robeauté's first market is the United States. Cartocci told tech.eu that the company works with the FDA to build its regulatory strategy, while in Europe companies submit a file and can wait about a year without feedback; she argued that FDA data could serve as a blueprint for European approval, and said the company wants its technology available in Europe as well.

The French register shows no revenue for 2024 and a net loss of €2.91 million. The company doubled its team after the 2025 round, according to tech.eu. Whether the EIC Fund has invested the equity part of the blended award is not public.

A European device, planned for America first

The EIC is funding a French medical robot that plans to reach patients in the United States before Europe, because its founders see the American regulatory process as faster to work with. As a result, the first clinical data from this EU-funded project may come from American hospitals. The project summary still frames the device around European health costs, including €800 billion spent on brain disorders in Europe in 2010.