Waters Corporation Acquires Ion Mobility Separation Technology Maker MOBILion Systems; Financial Terms Not Disclosed

Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT), a global life sciences and diagnostics leader, today announced that it has acquired MOBILion Systems, Inc., the pioneer of SLIM high-resolution ion mobility separation technology for complex molecular analysis. The acquisition broadens Waters' entry into the proteomics market, pairing SLIM's separation power with Waters' Xevo™ MRT MS speed and resolution enabling superior bottom-up analysis of complex proteomes versus LC-MS alone.

Strategic Benefits of the Acquisition

This acquisition accelerates Waters' strategy to enter and drive innovation in the attractive proteomics market, where LCMS proteomics is a $2 billion Total Addressable Market (TAM), growing at a high single-digit rate.1 It creates several benefits:

Greater proteome depth through enhanced separation: MOBILion's SLIM (Structures for Lossless Ion Manipulations) technology provides high-resolution ion mobility separation, resolving molecular differences that are difficult to distinguish by liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry alone. Combined with Waters' mass spectroscopy portfolio, SLIM technology is expected to increase proteome coverage, sensitivity and throughput for complex biological samples. Waters' high-end proteomics instruments will drive insights enabling downstream translational studies.

High-throughput proteomics for AI-enabled research: SLIM enabled technology will drive insights supporting large cohort studies and high-throughput generation of high-quality data required by foundation and frontier AI models. Through Waters AI Link, which brings Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) to waters_connect™ Software, and Waters' participation in Anthropic's Model Hardware Standard (MHS) research program, these capabilities support lab-in-the-loop experimentation, in which AI agents help design experiments and autonomously direct instrument operation. The acquisition also brings MOBILion's team and deep ion mobility expertise to Waters.

Future translation of discoveries into targeted assays: Using the Xevo TQ Absolute XR tandem quadrupole Mass Spectrometer, which offers industry-leading sensitivity and robustness, the acquisition creates a path from biomarker discovery to targeted biomarker verification and validation in clinical trial cohorts on a single platform as workflows in the waters_connect Platform support method transfer from discovery into development.

Longer-term opportunity in blood-based diagnostics: Waters' installed base of mass spectrometers in clinical laboratories provides a foundation for translating validated protein biomarkers into routine, blood-based tests. Over time, this creates test menu expansion opportunity for multiplex diagnostic workflows, serving applications such as Multi-Cancer Early Detection (MCED) and Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) monitoring.
 

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.