Company profile
SEC EDGAR ↗- Industry
- Orthopedic, Prosthetic & Surgical Appliances & Supplies
- Listed
- Nasdaq: ISRG
- Incorporated
- DE
- Headquarters
- Sunnyvale, CA
- Fiscal year end
- Dec 31
Financials
FY2025- Revenue
- $10.1B
- Net income
- $2.86B
- Total assets
- $20.5B
Latest full fiscal year from SEC filings (10-K) — SEC EDGAR ↗. Stratrix is a strategy publication, not a real-time financial data service.
The analyses
Ecosystem Lock-In · Moat & Competition
The da Vinci Robot Is the Bait — 84% of Intuitive's 2024 Revenue Was Recurring
A da Vinci robot costs a hospital well over a million dollars up front. That's the bait. The real business is the per-procedure stream behind it: 84% of Intuitive's 2024 revenue was recurring, and it built a lock-in so complete a rival could only attack it in court.
8 min
The Loss Leader · Business Model
Intuitive Profits on the da Vinci Itself; a Use-Counting Chip Holds 9,902 Hospitals
The myth says Intuitive subsidizes the $2M da Vinci to print money on instruments. The 10-K says otherwise: 67% blended gross margin, and a system priced at up to $3.1M that the math strongly suggests is no loss-leader. The real lock-in is a chip that counts your uses and 9,902 hospitals that can't walk away.
8 min
The Moat Anatomy · Moat & Competition
Intuitive's Patents Expired. Its Installed Base Kept Growing Anyway.
Everyone waited for patent expiry to unleash a flood of rivals against Intuitive Surgical. It came - and Intuitive's da Vinci fleet kept growing anyway, reaching 11,106 systems by end-2025, up from 9,902 a year earlier, well after the core patent-expiry window had closed. The moat was never the patents.
8 min
The Moat Anatomy · Moat & Competition
Intuitive's Triple Lock: Trained Surgeons, Metered Instruments, 25 Years of Evidence
Everyone points at Intuitive's 4,800-plus patents. But the early ones were licensed from SRI and IBM, and the patent wall is aging out. The real moat is a triple lock - trained surgeons, usage-counted instruments, 25 years of clinical evidence - and a rival has to beat all three at once.
8 min