Inner Logic has closed an $11.5 million seed round to build a simulation and data infrastructure for the design, testing, and validation of procedural medical devices. The financing was co-led by General Catalyst and Bison Ventures, with participation from J2VP, Defined, PTX, Valia Ventures, Page One, Alumni Ventures and Flare. The Baltimore-based company, formerly known as Semaphor, says its goal is to let manufacturers evaluate products across thousands of virtual patients and procedures before clinical deployment.
A seed round to accelerate in silico validation
Inner Logic will use the funding to expand its platform and partner with device companies on both conventional implants and next‑generation intelligent and autonomous procedural systems. The company positions large‑scale simulation as a complement — not a replacement — to physical testing with prototypes, cadaver labs or animal studies, which remain costly and limited in anatomical diversity and imaging conditions.
Testing devices on virtual patients
Inner Logic’s platform is built on virtual patients derived from real clinical and procedural data. These models let manufacturers assess how a device would perform across broader populations and in varied complication scenarios. For traditional devices such as heart valves or catheters, the platform enables iterative design testing before committing to additional physical test campaigns. The company’s name, Inner Logic, reflects its ambition to provide a more exhaustive and reproducible testing foundation.
A bridge to surgical autonomy
The same infrastructure is being adapted to support intelligent and autonomous surgical systems. Autonomous procedural technologies require evaluation across a wide range of anatomical variations, operating conditions and failure modes; Inner Logic argues simulation can provide the scale needed both to train these systems and to generate evidence of safety and performance.
Scientific evidence and current limits
Inner Logic says it has already trained AI algorithms entirely in simulation for an orthopedic trauma application and successfully transferred them to physical hardware and patient anatomy. As demonstrations, researchers also completed critical steps of a cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal) on a live animal model without human surgeon intervention. The founders emphasize these are research milestones — not proof that autonomous surgery is ready for routine clinical use — and that substantial additional work, validation, regulatory review and clinical evidence remain necessary.
Founding team and academic credibility
The company was co‑founded by Dr. Tito Porras (CEO), Dr. Mathias Unberath (CTO) and Dr. Axel Krieger (Chief Robotics Officer). Collectively the trio have authored more than 400 peer‑reviewed publications and are listed inventors on over 40 patents. Porras left a neurosurgery residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital to start the company; Unberath is a researcher in computer vision and simulation at Johns Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering; and Krieger is an associate professor whose work focuses on autonomous surgical robotics.
Investor reactions
Reva Nohria, partner at General Catalyst, says the team’s research demonstrates “procedural autonomy is not a distant vision” but requires a fundamental shift toward development and evidence generation in silico. Caleb Appleton, partner at Bison Ventures, points to the rare combination of technical robotics talent, physics‑aware AI modeling and deep surgical expertise on the team, arguing that “embedded intelligence will deliver the next wave of fundamental improvements.”
What’s next
Inner Logic is betting its simulation platform will convince manufacturers and regulators that large‑scale, reproducible in silico evaluations can meaningfully complement traditional testing methods. The path to broad clinical adoption of autonomous systems remains long, but the company aims to position itself as critical infrastructure for that transition.
