Medical Device Giants Begin Monetizing AI as Surgical-Robot Services Grow

Summary

Medical-device leaders are beginning to turn artificial intelligence into recurring revenue, although the pace differs between global and Chinese companies. Intuitive Surgical reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $2.892 billion, including $472 million in services, which grew 21% year over year and outpaced its hardware businesses. Its My Intuitive Plus subscription for da Vinci 5 combines AI case insights, remote collaboration and console simulation; the first renewal group was small, but no customer canceled. The case-insight system combines telemetry, robotic-arm kinematics and surgical video to track movements, flag abnormalities, generate trend reports and offer improvement suggestions. Intuitive says the underlying models include vision-language and reasoning models trained on two decades of surgical data, with early tests outperforming general AI systems on surgical-understanding tasks. Medtronic also reported commercial traction: its GI Genius colonoscopy system recorded double-digit revenue growth and is associated with a 14.4% increase in adenoma detection and a 50% reduction in missed lesions versus standard colonoscopy. The CathWorks AI imaging platform contributed nearly 300 basis points of organic growth to Medtronic’s global coronary business, while the broader cardiovascular business grew 13% in the quarter. Medtronic attributed growth in its cranial and spinal business partly to the AiBLE ecosystem, which connects AI planning, imaging, navigation, robotics, implants and outcomes data. The company is also developing Touch Surgery Aide with NVIDIA’s Holoscan edge-AI platform; its first application, IEP, received FDA clearance and alerts surgeons when a selected instrument moves outside the visible field during robotic surgery. Medtronic’s stated direction is an open platform where individually priced AI applications can run on shared infrastructure. By contrast, Chinese leaders such as United Imaging and Mindray have embedded AI in products and announced long-term digital strategies, but have not publicly disclosed AI-related revenue. The article attributes the gap to different market stages: global companies are monetizing installed hardware through software, while Chinese companies remain focused on hardware substitution and overseas expansion. It concludes that medical-device AI has entered a phase of revenue validation, while the scale and durability of that monetization remain to be demonstrated.