Sphere Korea Acquires LifeSemantics, a Digital Healthcare Company

Digital healthcare company LifeSemantics is being acquired by aerospace materials company SphereKorea.

[Photo by Life Semantics]

LifeSemantics recently held a board meeting and announced on the 24th that it resolved to conduct a third-party allotment paid-in capital increase of 33,324,000 common shares worth 5.7184 trillion KRW targeting SphereKorea. Upon completion of the capital increase, SphereKorea will hold approximately 16.7% of the shares. At the same time, Song Seungjae, CEO of LifeSemantics and the largest existing shareholder (24.96%), agreed to sell a total of 31,618,500 shares (19.97%) to Lucky W New Technology Investment Association No. 1 and Geo Energy Link for 11.16133 billion KRW. The 9,975,070 shares (4.99%) that CEO Song will continue to hold were acquired through a single allotment paid-in capital increase worth 2 billion KRW in May and still have a lock-up period of about 10 months remaining, meaning he has sold all the shares available for disposal.

If these transactions are all completed in early September, SphereKorea will become the largest shareholder of LifeSemantics. By solely holding 16.7%, it will become the largest single shareholder, and since it also participates as a major member in Lucky W New Technology Investment Association No. 1, which holds 9.5% of the shares, it is expected to strengthen its control through this. SphereKorea is a company specializing in the development and sales of aerospace materials. Last year, it recorded sales of 12.081 billion KRW and a net profit of 929 million KRW.

SphereKorea explained the background of this investment by stating, "We view the digital health and medical AI industry as a core sector of the future 4th industrial revolution era," and added, "We plan to continue all of LifeSemantics’ business." In particular, the strategy is to become a leading company in aerospace medicine by integrating digital healthcare technology with aerospace to help maintain and protect health even in space environments.

Kim Taehyun, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of LifeSemantics, said, “With this change in the largest shareholder, we have secured momentum to advance the medical artificial intelligence (AI) business, which has recently shown research and development achievements,” and added, “We will achieve rapid profit realization by utilizing SphereKorea’s business infrastructure.” A SphereKorea official also stated, “Based on LifeSemantics’ excellent medical AI technology, we plan to expand new business models in the U.S. market,” and “We will generously support the domestic commercialization of medical AI solutions owned by LifeSemantics.”