Volpara Wings Attached, Pushing '3 Major Expansions'... Lunit Heading Global

Acquisition of New Zealand Multinational Volpara Completed
1. Expansion of Product Portfolio ... Securing the Entire Treatment Journey
2. Regional Expansion ... Lunit Enters the US, Volpara Enters Europe
3. Future Expansion ... Building 'Autonomous Supermassive AI' Using Data Owned by Volpara

Medical AI company Lunit is accelerating its entry into the global medical AI market through the acquisition of Volpara Health Technologies. The plan is to actively create synergy through three major expansions: product lineup, sales regions, and data.

Terry Thomas, CEO of Volpara Health Technologies (left), and Beomseok Seo, CEO of Lunit, are posing for a commemorative photo at a press conference celebrating the successful acquisition held on the morning of the 22nd at Lunit headquarters in Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
[Photo by Chunhee Lee]

On the morning of the 22nd, Lunit CEO Beomseok Seo stated at a press conference, "Lunit and Volpara will closely collaborate to realize the shared mission of conquering cancer and actively pioneer the global market," adding, "This acquisition is an essential choice to lead the global medical AI market, and we will take the lead in the global cancer diagnosis market going forward." The day before, Lunit paid a total acquisition price of 292.53 million Australian dollars (approximately 264.7 billion KRW) to acquire 100% of Volpara's shares and incorporated it as a subsidiary.

Lunit is a company developing AI-based medical imaging diagnosis and treatment platforms. It is targeting the global market with its AI imaging analysis solution for cancer diagnosis, Lunit INSIGHT, and its AI biomarker platform for cancer treatment, Lunit SCOPE. However, to gain momentum for global expansion such as entering the U.S. market, Lunit has been pursuing the acquisition of Volpara, a New Zealand-based breast cancer screening solution company, since last year.

Lunit aims for 'business expansion' in three aspects through this Volpara acquisition: product lineup expansion, regional expansion, and future expansion.

First, the plan is to expand Lunit's product lineup, which has been focused on diagnosis. Volpara has built a diverse product portfolio covering not only diagnosis but also optimizing screening workflows and monitoring patients after examinations, encompassing the entire breast cancer treatment process. Since Lunit's diagnostic solutions have advantages over Volpara's, the strategy is to integrate them into Volpara's business.

Next, Lunit will actively enter the U.S. market through Volpara. Currently, 82% of Lunit's overseas sales come from abroad, but most are concentrated in Europe. Lunit USA, established in 2018, had no sales last year. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved three products in the Lunit INSIGHT diagnostic solution lineup?CXR Triage, MMG, and DBT?there are no sales records yet.

Volpara is in the opposite situation. Although a New Zealand company, it supplies solutions to over 2,000 medical institutions in the U.S., with 97% of its sales generated in the U.S. However, it lacks suitable sales channels in Europe.

Therefore, Lunit plans to sell FDA-approved products in the U.S. through Volpara, while Volpara will use Lunit's sales network to enter Europe. Additionally, Lunit intends to further strengthen its market dominance by selling Volpara products in regions outside the U.S.

Future expansion will be driven by the vast data held by Volpara. CEO Seo cited the synergy created by combining the AI technologies of both companies as the greatest achievement of this acquisition.

The core of this synergy is data. Volpara currently holds over 100 million breast imaging scans of Western women, including those from the U.S. Meanwhile, Lunit has trained its Lunit INSIGHT MMG model on 300,000 images. Since this volume has already produced highly competitive products, training on over 300 times more images could enable the development of a foundational model applicable regardless of conditions and environments, and further advance to an autonomous ultra-large AI capable of self-interpretation and diagnosis. Considering the cost of acquiring such data, which would require at least 300 billion KRW, the effect is expected to exceed the acquisition cost.

From a technical perspective, combining Lunit's AI algorithm development capabilities with Volpara's precise breast tissue density analysis technology will elevate the level of breast cancer screening technology to a new dimension.