In 2014, I wrote two posts about the US-made ARTAS hair transplant robot after its manufacturer announced the sale of its 100th unit. ARTAS is used for follicular unit extraction (FUE) during hair restoration procedures. It was first approved by the US FDA in 2011, and has since monopolized the global robotic hair transplant market. However, it now seems like ARTAS will finally face competition from China’s new and much cheaper HAIRO hair transplant robot. In less than a year, around 30 HAIRO units have been sold.
HAIRO Hair Transplant Robot from China
The HAIRO AI-powered hair transplant robot is made by China’s Puncture Robotic and it came out in January 2025. Per a recent article covering this device, Puncture Robotic has already sold around 30 units of HAIRO in China. Sales expanded after the device received the medical device usage green light from China’s National Medical Products Administration.
Using 3D imaging and AI, the HAIRO hair transplant robot can extract up to 1,800 hair follicle units per hour. Ultimately, this precision driven robot will cause less extraction related skin trauma compared to regular human graft extraction. Especially if the human extractors are not very experienced, well trained or just having a bad “human” day. Quote:
“Compared to traditional manual hair transplants, the first-generation hair transplant robot achieves a 95 percent accuracy rate in automatic follicle extraction, with each follicle taking less than 2 seconds to extract, and extraction precision reaching 0.01 millimeters, and depth precision at 0.05 millimeters.”
HAIRO’s AI also prioritizes the extraction of multi-stranded follicles (i.e., grafts containing more than one hair). When transplanted, such grafts create a denser look. HAIRO can achieve a maximum multi-follicle extraction rate of 95 percent, versus an average 65% manual multi-follicle extraction rate.
Also of interest, scientists from Thailand published an insanely detailed paper in February 2025 where they outlined how to develop an integrated image-guided robotic system for hair transplant surgery. Well worth a full read for those who are interested in this kind of technology.
HAIRO Cost
According to Puncture Robotic co-founder He Yundi, ARTAS was priced at between 6 million to 8 million yuan in China (equal to around $840,000 to $1.1 million). In contrast, the HAIRO hair transplant robot costs only about a quarter of this total (i.e., $210,000 to $280,000). Mr. He claims that this is the key factor that led ARTAS to exit the Chinese market.
China’s Hair Transplant Market
I constantly read new articles that mention an ever increasing number of people are losing their hair in China and India, the two world’s most populated countries. In the past, I even used to collect these links and add them in my post titled: “Are men losing their hair at earlier ages than in past generations?“.
In the latest article about HAIRO that I linked to earlier, it is mentioned that the number of new hair transplant clinics that opened in China rose from 15 in 2012 to 119 in 2021. This number then dropped to 89 in 2022, but the overall growth is still spectacular. However, China is still no match for Turkey, where the number of existing hair transplant clinics is though to exceed 5,000. Albeit many of these are substandard and often un-authorized black market entities.
A report by MRFR on China’s hair transplant sector put the market’s value at $367.5 million in 2024, and projected that it would hit $1.2 billion in a decade. The mraket for robotic hair transplants in China will rise from $90 million in 2024 to $216 million in 2035.