Robeauté
What is the mission?
Robeauté is developing neurosurgical microbots to diagnose, treat and monitor the brain. The team is on a mission to transform brain interaction and intervention through minimally invasive treatment.
Who are the founders?
CEO Bertrand Duplat is a founder who’s building something for a higher purpose than simply generating financial returns. He founded the company after feeling helpless when his mother tragically died of a brain tumor that was incurable with existing treatments.
Alongside this personal passion, he brings with him a 30-year career developing semiconductors and advanced robotics, having founded four other startups along the way, selling one of them — 3D software company Virtools — to Dassault Systems in 2005.
He’s joined by cofounder Joana Cartocci, who has more than 15 years experience in operations management behind her, and sat on the board of directors of France Biotech. Their combined networks have helped them not just build technology, but also an ecosystem around their platform, partnering with the long-established leader in digital neurosurgery and precision radiotherapy, Brainlab, while assembling an advisory board of some of the world’s experts in neurosurgery.
Why did Ian get involved?
Brain cancers are the biggest cancer killer of children and people under 40. Brain disorders more broadly account for 15% of global healthcare burden, surpassing both cardiovascular diseases and other types of cancer, in large part because our treatment options for these conditions are woefully under-developed.
Paris-based Robeauté is a startup that is taking on this frontier by combining entrepreneurial scar tissue, a world-leading microrobotics team and a deeply personal founder story to develop a robot the size of a grain of rice that can navigate the brain, deliver drug payloads, take biopsies and gather data. No other company in the world has developed technology of this tiny size that can drive, steer and locate itself in the brain.
Going small will allow us to explore a new frontier, like the underexplored deep ocean, where better technology could save lives and suffering while generating huge business value.