GE HealthCare reportedly nears $1B Sofie Biosciences acquisition

Sunday’s Financial Times reported that talks had advanced for GE HealthCare to buy Sofie Biosciences for approximately $1 billion from its founders and private-equity backers. The date was September 13, 2026. Approximately one billion dollars for the chemicals behind the images.

Sofie develops radioactive chemicals and tracers used in PET cancer imaging. Positron emission tomography is the scan that needs those agents injected so the machine can map tumors by their biology, not only their shape. Reuters followed the same day and said it could not independently verify the Financial Times account. Neither company had confirmed the talks. The two firms had worked as commercial partners on cancer-imaging tracers, and a completed purchase would convert that contract into ownership of pipeline, rights, and supply rather than leave the chemistry on the other side of a license.

In October 2023 the two companies signed a global licensing agreement on FAPI tracers—fibroblast activation protein inhibitors used with PET. Fibroblast activation protein is highly expressed in cancer-associated fibroblasts, the support cells in the microenvironment around many solid tumors, among them breast, pancreatic, colorectal, lung, liver, and gastric cancers. A radioactive inhibitor aimed at that protein can make the supporting tissue visible on the scan. Under the deal GE HealthCare took worldwide rights to gallium-68 FAPI-46 and rights outside the United States to fluorine-18 FAPI-74. Sofie kept U.S. clinical development and commercialization rights to FAPI-74. One lead agent’s American market, along with manufacturing and the rest of the pipeline, stayed on the partner’s side of the contract. Buying the company would end the split. GE HealthCare would own the pipeline it had licensed, the U.S. rights it still lacked, the manufacturing footprint, and the supply chain.

The Sofie talks would rank as GE HealthCare’s second-biggest acquisition since the company became independent after spinning off from General Electric. That separation formed part of a three-way corporate split that also produced GE Aerospace and GE Vernova. Some accounts place the spin-off in 2023; others date it to 2024. Once on its own, GE HealthCare operated as a medical imaging and diagnostics company whose primary customers were hospitals and health networks. Its first major purchase after the split was Intelerad, for $2.3 billion. Intelerad provided a cloud-based medical imaging platform and was expected to bring $270 million in recurring annual revenue. No larger deal had followed.

Unlike GE Aerospace and GE Vernova, GE HealthCare had struggled since the spin-off. The stock was down over 32 percent from its all-time high. From the day it went public the shares were up just 1.48 percent. The most recent quarter showed revenue of $5.3 billion, up 3.5 percent. Advanced imaging solutions supplied more than $3.77 billion of that total, a 5 percent rise from the year before. Pharmaceutical diagnostics contributed $843 million in the same cut. Patient care solutions fell 13 percent, to $675 million. On the fuller-year view the pharmaceutical diagnostics segment had already reached $2.9 billion in 2025, climbing 15.6 percent with EBIT margins near 30 percent. That was the growth pocket. Against it sat free cash flow of $68 million. A potential billion-dollar check would land on that figure.

The commercial logic sat in the chemistry itself. Radiopharmaceutical tracers are short-lived consumables. Every PET procedure needs a fresh dose; the isotope decays and cannot be stockpiled. Hardware sales arrive in lumpy capital cycles. The tracers turn the installed scanner base into repeated procedure revenue, the chemistry purchased again with each scan rather than once with the machine.

Outside capital had already taken a seat. Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management held a $200 million stake in GE HealthCare and was expected to push changes to improve performance. Wall Street had drawn its own line beside that stake. Analysts predicted annual revenue would rise 5.3 percent this year to $22.72 billion. Wells Fargo carried a price target of $85. Citigroup’s target was $75. The average estimate among analysts sat at $77, up 21 percent from the then-current level. A move to own the radioactive tracers that feed PET scanners would be judged against the growth the Street already expected and against the demand for better results that came with the outside holding.

On September 13, 2026, the Financial Times report left its original column and crossed the market wires. Benzinga put the talks under its own byline that day, naming Sofie Biosciences and the reported price at approximately $1 billion. Seeking Alpha posted the same day that GE HealthCare was said to near a $1 billion Sofie Biosciences deal for agents used with medical scans. Dealroom entered the figure into its feed and wrote that the company reportedly neared a $1 billion acquisition of the radiopharmaceutical maker, noting a possible announcement as soon as this week. MarketScreener carried the Reuters version of the Financial Times account. Ainvest took up the leak twice that Sunday. Business-news-today published its own parse of the talks and the price. The copies spread the story without locking it down. Sources familiar with the matter left open only the timing: an agreement could be announced as soon as the coming week, still unconfirmed. GE HealthCare’s shares had dropped for 12 consecutive days around the time of the report.