Petal Surgical, the stealth-exit darling using AI and focused ultrasound to destroy diseased tissue without ever opening the body, has closed a follow-on financing round led by Blue Pool Capital as it pushes toward first-in-human studies of its acoustic-liquefaction platform.
The Mountain View, California company announced the round on June 2, with participation from Salience Capital, A&E Investments, TIME Ventures (the family-office vehicle of Marc and Lynne Benioff), and existing investors including Actions Capital (formerly K50 Ventures) and TSVC. Petal did not disclose the new round's size, but said cumulative funding now sits comfortably above $25 million following its $10 million Series A in October 2025 and a March 2026 top-up.
What "incisionless" actually means
Petal's platform is built around what the company calls Acoustic Sculpting — a proprietary form of boiling histotripsy that uses precisely steered focused-ultrasound waves to liquefy tumors and other diseased tissue. Vapor-filled cavities are formed one at a time, allowing connected treatment regions and a path through tougher tissues. The body then clears the cellular debris naturally.
Unlike traditional endovascular robotic systems or image-guided surgical robots that still rely on a physical entry point, Petal's approach pairs robotic positioning with AI-driven targeting to deliver therapy entirely from outside the body. The company calls it "no cuts, no heat, no toxicity."
A heavyweight founding bench
Petal was founded by image-guided surgery engineer Prash Chopra alongside neurosurgeon Dr. Bowen Jiang, robotic-spine-surgery pioneer Dr. Nicholas Theodore, and Rony Abovitz, a co-founder of Mako Surgical (now part of Stryker). In March, Intuitive Surgical co-founder Dr. Fred Moll – widely regarded as the father of surgical robotics – joined the board, an endorsement that effectively front-loaded follow-on investor interest.
Why histotripsy is hot
The closest commercial analogue is HistoSonics, whose Edison platform is now in expanding US use for liver tumors. But Petal argues that its robotically positioned, AI-targeted, multi-cavity approach can chase a far wider range of soft-tissue indications and travel to community hospitals that would never install a full surgical-robotics suite. With the surgical-robotics market projected to top $56 billion by 2034, investors are betting that incisionless options become a first-line modality rather than an exotic alternative.
What's next
Petal said the new capital will fund first-in-human studies, expand its preclinical pipeline and grow the engineering team. With soft-robotics platforms and image-guided surgical robots converging on the same problem set, the question is no longer whether incisionless surgery is possible — it is whether Petal can prove the model first.
Reporting based on coverage from MassDevice, Guided Solutions MedTech and Ambulatory Surgery Center News.