Custom Surgical has closed a €3.5 million pre-series A round to accelerate its push to modernise ophthalmology. The financing was led by Ventech, with participation from ZEISS and a mix of new and existing investors.
The funding will fuel the company’s ambition to digitise one of healthcare’s most analogue domains, everyday eye care. With fresh capital in place, the company plans to expand sales and marketing efforts in Europe and the United States, grow its commercial team, and strengthen engineering capabilities in Munich.
Revealing to TFN, the company stated, “The total raised to date is €6 million. But more importantly, the company had to generate more sales than it raised in this financing round. The company has been selling from its early beginnings and reinvested all its assets into continuously advancing its product portfolio.”
One-stop shop for digitalisation
Slit lamp examinations and microsurgical procedures remain central to eye care, yet the documentation surrounding them often lags behind. Images and videos are captured inconsistently, stored across different systems, or not structured for long-term follow-up. Custom Surgical is focused on changing that without forcing clinics to rip and replace the equipment they already trust.
Custom Surgical, based in Munich, Germany, was founded in 2018 by mechatronics engineer Federico Acosta and Fernando Benito. The company specialises in digitalising surgical microscopes and slit lamps for ophthalmology, with a focus on affordable imaging technology, and it is the one-stop shop for digitalisation.
Custom Surgical’s approach is pragmatic. Rather than replacing core devices, the company retrofits slit lamps and surgical microscopes already in use. Its hardware-agnostic solutions integrate directly into existing clinical environments, allowing practices and hospitals to capture high-quality visual data without disrupting established workflows.
At the heart of the system is MicroREC Connect, a cloud-based platform that manages ophthalmic data across devices and manufacturers. It enables secure capture, storage, and structured organisation of images and videos while supporting longitudinal patient documentation.
Unlike a traditional image archive, MicroREC Connect acts as a unifying digital layer, connecting examinations, procedures, and follow-ups over time. The result is greater workflow continuity and improved collaboration across clinical teams.
A measured path toward smarter care
Custom Surgical’s strategy is deliberately phased. First comes digitisation. Then workflow standardisation. Only after that will advanced clinical support tools be layered on top.
By lowering adoption barriers and grounding new tools in real-world practice, the company aims to ensure that innovation enhances, rather than complicates, daily routines. With adoption growing across Europe and the Americas, Custom Surgical is preparing to introduce AI-based clinical support features designed to assist healthcare professionals.
These tools will focus on improving image capture quality, supporting triage decisions, and optimising referral pathways. Importantly, clinicians remain firmly in control, with technology serving as a support layer rather than a replacement for expertise.
By building the digital infrastructure first, Custom Surgical is laying the groundwork for a more connected, efficient future in eye care, one workflow at a time.
Looking ahead
Detailing the plans for the near future, the company said, “Within the next 12 months, Custom Surgical is planning to release its first AI-powered triage tool to help ease the long waiting lines for eyecare treatment.”
What about diversity?
Disclosing the diversity statistics, Custom Surgical stated, “The organisation shows a significant cultural diversity. Currently its team of 16 employees includes 9 different countries of origin. The team is run by a diverse executive board with 2 female heads of departments and 3 male heads of departments.”
“Custom Surgical’s digitalisation solution has already gained impressive traction in a short period of time — proving its value proposition for practitioners and its potential to redefine ophthalmology workflows by leveraging AI-based clinical support to transform analogue diagnostic practices,” says Mike Gänßler, Investment Manager at ZEISS Ventures.
“Global demand for eye care is growing at a pace that current clinical processes can no longer sustain,” said Federico Acosta, CEO of Custom Surgical. “Scalable digital workflows are essential to enable fast, accurate screening for a growing and aging worldwide population. This financing validates our long-term vision: build the data foundation first, then unlock AI-driven clinical and economic value. We are proud to partner with Ventech, ZEISS, and our investors as we scale globally.”
Nicolas Barthalon, Principal at Ventech commented: “By uniting hardware, software, data, and AI, Custom Surgical is seizing a generational opportunity to reshape clinical eye-care workflows at global scale. The team has built a truly unique data asset, achieved global adoption with remarkable capital efficiency, and is addressing a structural inefficiency in a rapidly growing market. We are glad to join forces with industry leaders like Zeiss to fuel Custom Surgical’s ambition to become the data standard in ophthalmology.”
