Medical AI company Selvas AI has acquired medical device manufacturer Mediana.

Selvas AI said Monday that it has signed a business cooperation and share transfer agreement with Mediana for AI medical business. Under the agreement, Mediana Chairman Khil Moon-jong transferred 5.2 million shares (32 percent of the total outstanding shares) for about 73.2 billion won ($56.7 million).

Selvas AI will acquire Khil’s equity and participate in a third-party allotment capital increase of Mediana. As a result, Selvas AI will hold 5,893,993 Mediana shares, representing a 31.69 percent stake. Upon completing all procedures, Selvas AI will become the largest shareholder of Mediana.

Selvas AI’s subsidiary, Selvas Healthcare, will also participate in Mediana’s capital increase, acquiring 1,083,591 shares (5.83 percent), bringing Selvas AI's final stake to 37.52 percent.

Following the acquisition, Khil, Mediana's founder and chairman, will resign as CEO and step down from its management.

Following the acquisition news, shares of KOSDAQ-listed Mediana rose 20.81 percent, or 1,640 won, from the previous day's close to 9,520 won.

The two companies said they entered into the share purchase agreement based on the judgment that building an alliance, including converging core competencies between medical devices, AI, and SW technologies and expanding the customer base, is essential to grow as an AI medical innovation company.

Mediana is a medical device company for hospitals, supplying patient monitors, automated external defibrillators (AEDs), and medical consumables to the hospital market. It also supplies ODM products to global medical device company Medtronic.

Selvas AI believes that Mediana’s patient monitoring device, the company’s flagship product that checks the patient's pulse, respiration rate, and consciousness, can be a platform for AI telemedicine and AI diagnostic technology while enabling various AI medical commercialization through the collected patient biometric data.

"This agreement is based on the judgment that convergence with AI and SW technologies is essential for the core competitiveness of future medical devices," Mediana Chairman Khil said. "By applying AI and diagnostic technologies from the two Selvas companies to our medical devices, we expect to create innovative added value in the AI medical field as well as medical device competitiveness."

Selvas AI CEO Kwak Min-cheol said, "The combination of the three companies means the birth of the largest AI medical innovator in Korea with both hardware technology competitiveness and AI and SW technology.”

Kwak added that AI technology will provide practical help for medical fields that lack specialized personnel, solving social problems and creating customer value to create full-scale growth in the domestic and global AI medical market.