What is the current revenue for the company in China 
aphy for you. Can you give us some color there on what you're seeing in terms of the order book and pull through? And how do you see those trends evolving post-NMPA approval here?
Christian Henry -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. I think it's too early to say post-approval. I think we'll wait and see and talk to Barry. That's pretty fresh news.
But I think in China, we're seeing the business continue to be strong. Hopefully, it continues to be decent.
Susan Kim -- Chief Financial Officer
It still continues to be strong, improving since COVID every quarter.
Christian Henry -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. It continues to improve. And so I think we're really bullish on China. I think there's macro factors that are completely outside of our control between the U.S.
and China that maybe I start to lose sleep over a little bit, but they're completely out of our control. But based on what we control and what we can see and what customers are actually doing with our technology, we're quite encouraged, and we think the opportunity is still in front of us, quite frankly.
Tejas Savant -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Got it. Really helpful. Thanks, guys.
Christian Henry -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yup.
Operator
And for the next question, Dan Brennan of Cowen. Please go ahead, sir.
Dan Brennan -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst
Great. Thanks. Thanks for taking the question. Hey, Christian.
Hey, Susan. Maybe just, Christian, you alluded to it a couple of times during the call, but just on the funnel itself, I don't know in the past kind of look on a clarity you provide on it. But just could you give a sense of what the funnel looks like today maybe like customer segment and kind of how it's evolved over the course of 2021?
Christian Henry -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. First of all, Dan, congrats on your new role. We're going to miss Doug, but it's good to have you on the ball club. With respect to the funnel itself, let's state that we haven't given a lot of color, and I don't think we will give a lot of color because those processes internally are evolving and are being built and improving all the time.
We've spent a ton of time this year defining the funnel more, creating a common language from which the sales force can communicate with each other and with executives so that we get much better about forecast accuracy, so that we can stand up in front of you and give you what we hope to be pretty reliable projections. One of the things we talked about for the first time, kind of some of the segment, market areas that we're focused on and our relative revenues. The reality is that the company didn't have any of those capabilities, and we had to come in and build that. And so at this time, I really -- it's probably not appropriate for me to give you more color on the specific funnel other than the general comment that often use.
This -- the increasing commercial footprint is directly impacting the quality and the size of the funnel, which does give us generally better visibility into the future than perhaps we've had in the past. But at any given quarter, since instruments are still such a significant part of our quarterly revenues and they're quite binary because they're large dollar numbers, they could have an impact on any given quarter. But if you look out over time, we're very encouraged what we see in the funnel that there is very strong demand for these products and platforms. This will help us grow.
As we grow, we will be able to improve our gross margins. As we improve our gross margins, we'll be able to get better leverage across the business and make that push toward ultimately getting to cash flow breakeven and better.
Dan Brennan -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst
Great. No, that was helpful. Thanks, Christian. Maybe just a high-level one on kind of academic funding.
Obviously, it seems to be pretty robust from the headline figures and entering '22. Is that something -- clearly you've got a lot of growth levers at your disposal, which you've discussed, but is that something 
aphy for you. Can you give us some color there on what you're seeing in terms of the order book and pull through? And how do you see those trends evolving post-NMPA approval here?
Christian Henry -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. I think it's too early to say post-approval. I think we'll wait and see and talk to Barry. That's pretty fresh news.
But I think in China, we're seeing the business continue to be strong. Hopefully, it continues to be decent.
Susan Kim -- Chief Financial Officer
It still continues to be strong, improving since COVID every quarter.
Christian Henry -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. It continues to improve. And so I think we're really bullish on China. I think there's macro factors that are completely outside of our control between the U.S.
and China that maybe I start to lose sleep over a little bit, but they're completely out of our control. But based on what we control and what we can see and what customers are actually doing with our technology, we're quite encouraged, and we think the opportunity is still in front of us, quite frankly.
Tejas Savant -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Got it. Really helpful. Thanks, guys.
Christian Henry -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yup.
Operator
And for the next question, Dan Brennan of Cowen. Please go ahead, sir.
Dan Brennan -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst
Great. Thanks. Thanks for taking the question. Hey, Christian.
Hey, Susan. Maybe just, Christian, you alluded to it a couple of times during the call, but just on the funnel itself, I don't know in the past kind of look on a clarity you provide on it. But just could you give a sense of what the funnel looks like today maybe like customer segment and kind of how it's evolved over the course of 2021?
Christian Henry -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. First of all, Dan, congrats on your new role. We're going to miss Doug, but it's good to have you on the ball club. With respect to the funnel itself, let's state that we haven't given a lot of color, and I don't think we will give a lot of color because those processes internally are evolving and are being built and improving all the time.
 We've spent a ton of time this year defining the funnel more, creating a common language from which the sales force can communicate with each other and with executives so that we get much better about forecast accuracy, so that we can stand up in front of you and give you what we hope to be pretty reliable projections. One of the things we talked about for the first time, kind of some of the segment, market areas that we're focused on and our relative revenues. The reality is that the company didn't have any of those capabilities, and we had to come in and build that. And so at this time, I really -- it's probably not appropriate for me to give you more color on the specific funnel other than the general comment that often use.
This -- the increasing commercial footprint is directly impacting the quality and the size of the funnel, which does give us generally better visibility into the future than perhaps we've had in the past. But at any given quarter, since instruments are still such a significant part of our quarterly revenues and they're quite binary because they're large dollar numbers, they could have an impact on any given quarter. But if you look out over time, we're very encouraged what we see in the funnel that there is very strong demand for these products and platforms. This will help us grow.
As we grow, we will be able to improve our gross margins. As we improve our gross margins, we'll be able to get better leverage across the business and make that push toward ultimately getting to cash flow breakeven and better.
Dan Brennan -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst
Great. No, that was helpful. Thanks, Christian. Maybe just a high-level one on kind of academic funding.
Obviously, it seems to be pretty robust from the headline figures and entering '22. Is that something -- clearly you've got a lot of growth levers at your disposal, which you've discussed, but is that something 