Lunit expands global reach with Volpara Health acquisition

Lunit CEO Brandon Suh

South Korean medical AI company Lunit is well-positioned to make a strong entry into the world’s largest healthcare market, the United States, after acquiring a global breast cancer AI platform company. This is the company’s first acquisition of a promising overseas medical AI firm since its founding and promises substantial synergies within Lunit’s core medical AI business.

[Courtesy of Lunit]

Lunit announced the signing of a $193.07 million (252.5 billion won) deal to acquire Volpara Health Technologies, which supplies AI solutions to over 2,000 healthcare institutions in the United States, on Thursday. The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed Volpara with a market capitalization of A $193.32 (167.2 billion won) as of the previous day, with Lunit planning to finance the acquisition through cash reserves, borrowing, and rights offerings.

Founded in 2009 in New Zealand, Volpara has an AI platform focused on breast cancer screenings and has acquired various AI solutions to facilitate early breast cancer diagnosis as well as streamline the examination process. Notably, Volpara possesses a database of 100 million breast cancer screening images, which is significantly higher than Lunit’s database of 300,000 images, considered Korea’s largest.

The Korean company’s acquisition of Volpara instantly grants access to an independent sales network in the United States.

“The Volpara acquisition significantly shortens our entry point into the U.S. market by at least five years,” Lunit CEO Brandon Suh said, projecting the company’s growth as the sole entity with an annual revenue of 100 billion won in 2025.

Volpara, which saw its revenue surge from 21 billion won last year to 28 billion won in 2023, has boasted an average annual growth rate of 63 percent over the last five years. Currently, four out of 10 breast imaging centers in the U.S. use Volpara products.

“Although 28 billion won in revenue may be modest, the synergy will be much greater when it is integrated with Lunit’s products as well as significantly increasing scalability and leading to higher actual revenues for Lunit,” Suh said.

The market for breast cancer screening software is also forecast to grow substantially.

“The United States produces about 40 million breast imaging videos annually,” according to Suh, who foresees the U.S. breast cancer screening software market to be valued at around 1.5 trillion won internally. The company projects the market to grow to about 3 trillion won in five to six years.