GE HealthCare agrees to buy radiopharmaceutical maker Sofie Biosciences for $945m

GE HealthCare agreed on 5 October 2026 to buy Sofie Biosciences, a US contract manufacturer of positron emission tomography (PET) radiopharmaceuticals, for $945 million in cash ¹. Closing is expected in the first half of 2027 ¹.

What GE HealthCare is buying

Sofie Biosciences runs a network of 15 contract manufacturing sites across the US ¹. Its products are the radioactive drugs injected for PET scans, which show metabolic and molecular activity, and some are also used in treatment ¹. On completion it will sit inside GE HealthCare's pharmaceutical diagnostics business, PDx ¹.

The commercial logic rests on physics. BTIG analyst Ryan Zimmerman noted that F18-labelled PET products have a half-life of 110 minutes, so they must be made and delivered close to where patients are scanned ¹. Owning Sofie gives GE HealthCare its own US production and distribution footprint for those products ¹. Sofie already makes GE HealthCare's Flyrcado F18 injection ¹.

The deal also brings GE HealthCare the US rights to FAPI-74, a PET radiotracer in development for imaging across cancer types ¹. GE HealthCare already held the rights outside the US ¹.

Kevin O'Neill, chief executive of PDx, said Sofie is "expected to grow in the low double digits" inside the group and lets GE HealthCare "participate across the radiopharmaceutical value stream" ¹. The company expects the purchase to add to revenue growth and to adjusted earnings per share in its first full year of ownership ¹².

What it means for the market

The acquisition moves GE HealthCare from relying on partners towards owning part of the supply chain for the imaging agents its scanners depend on. It will keep a mixed model, supplying customers from its own facilities and from PDx's other contract manufacturing partners in the US ¹.

For other radiopharmaceutical companies, the main point is that Sofie will continue to operate as an independent manufacturing partner and keep supplying its existing portfolio, including products made for other providers ¹. Rivals that use Sofie's sites will be watching how that commitment holds under a competitor's ownership, a question the sources do not answer.

For hospitals and imaging centres, Zimmerman said the extra manufacturing and distribution capacity could ease bottlenecks that slow the take-up of radiopharmaceuticals ². The sources give no figures for Sofie's revenue, margins or current utilisation, so the scale of that effect is not yet clear.

Caveats

The terms reported are GE HealthCare's own, and the earnings guidance covers only the first full year of ownership ¹. FAPI-74 remains a pipeline product. The transaction still has to close, which GE HealthCare expects in the first half of 2027 ².