SEOUL (Reuters) -Samsung Electronics said on Tuesday it had signed an agreement to acquire Xealth, a U.S.-based healthcare platform, as part of its efforts to expand its mobile healthcare services business.
The South Korean company did not disclose the value of the transaction.
Samsung said the two companies hoped to create “synergy between Samsung’s advanced wearable technology and Xealth’s digital health platform” which runs digital health programs and manages data linking care providers, including more than 500 U.S. hospitals, with their patients.
The acquisition comes as Samsung steps up efforts to diversify beyond its core semiconductor and smartphone businesses. Samsung has been betting on the medical sector as one of its new growth engines, along with consumer audio, cooling and heating systems, and robotics.
In May, Samsung Electronics agreed to buy Germany’s FlaktGroup for 1.5 billion euros ($1.68 billion) as it looks to meet growing demand for cooling of data centres used for artificial intelligence projects.
Samsung, led by Chairman Jay Y. Lee, said at a shareholder meeting in March that it was looking for “meaningful” deals this year to drive growth after having lagged rivals in tapping the AI chip boom led by Nvidia.
Samsung earlier on Tuesday projected a far worse-than- expected 56% plunge in second-quarter operating profit due to weak AI chip sales, deepening investor concerns over the tech giant’s ability to revive its struggling semiconductor business.
(Reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Sonali Paul)
