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.
Does this mean that ISRG is considering buying TRXC?