Intuitive Surgical (NSDQ:ISRG) paid $6 million to acquire a 60,000-square-foot building in Durham, N.C. just a few miles down the road from rival surgical robot maker TransEnterix (NYSE:TRXC), according to a Triangle Business Journal report.

The new acquisition joins a smaller facility Intuitive has in the region at N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus, according to the report.

The new facilities come with the option to expand into a planned 45,000-square-foot building space adjacent to the building the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company already purchased, according to the Business Journal.

The acquisition of the site comes hot on the heels of TransEnterix receiving FDA 510(k) clearance for its Senhance robot-assisted platform, the 1st new entrant into the robot-assisted abdominal surgery space since Intuitive initially rolled out its da Vinci platform in 2000.

Intuitive Surgical opened its initial R&D office in the region last October, less than half a year after TransEnterix announced it was cutting 50 employees after the FDA rejected an application for its previous surgical robotics platform, the SurgiBot.