ImpriMed Raises $10M Series A2 Bridge With NAVER D2SF

Executive Summary: On September 18, 2026, NAVER D2SF said it had joined a $10 million Series A2 bridge round in ImpriMed, the Silicon Valley company whose xCellSense platform tests a pet’s own live cancer cells against candidate drugs before treatment starts. LB Investment led the round. ImpriMed has already run more than 27, 000 canine and feline lymphoma tests, and it wants the same platform cleared for human blood cancers by early 2027.

Key Facts

Company: ImpriMed, Inc. (Silicon Valley, United States)
Country: United States; South Korea (investor NAVER D2SF)
Industry: Veterinary diagnostics / precision oncology / AI
Category: Companion-animal cancer diagnostics with a human-oncology pipeline
Event: $10 million Series A2 bridge round joined by NAVER D2SF
Date: 2026-09-18
Location: Seoul, South Korea and Silicon Valley, United States
Source: NAVER D2SF via PR Newswire (Sept. 18, 2026)

What Happened

NAVER D2SF, the in-house corporate venture arm of South Korea’s NAVER, said on September 18, 2026 that it had invested in ImpriMed as part of a $10 million Series A2 bridge round. LB Investment led the financing. Samsung Securities and Alois Ventures came in as new investors beside NAVER D2SF, while existing backers BonAngels and Han River Partners added follow-on money. The bridge follows a $23 million Series A that ImpriMed raised in 2023. Neither the company nor NAVER D2SF disclosed a valuation.

ImpriMed’s pitch is narrow and specific. Its xCellSense platform keeps cancer cells taken from a patient alive outside the body long enough to measure how they respond to individual drugs, then folds those results into genomic, immunophenotypic and clinical data through multimodal AI models trained on more than 3.5 million data points. In practice the output answers a question a vet asks on the day of diagnosis: which of the available protocols is most likely to work on this animal, and which one should be ruled out before its side effects land.

Background

ImpriMed was co-founded in Silicon Valley by chief executive Sungwon Lim and chief technology officer Jamin Koo, who met while studying at KAIST and Stanford. The company built its commercial base in veterinary medicine rather than human care, a route that animal-health founders often take because companion-animal patients can be treated years ahead of an equivalent human product.

That base is now measurable: more than 27, 000 tests have been run for canine and feline lymphoma, and ImpriMed’s tools are used by more than 600 veterinary hospitals across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and South Korea. A retrospective study the company cites found a threefold increase in survival time and a fourfold improvement in treatment response, and it says the results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal. GlobalPetIndex has not independently verified those figures, and retrospective studies sit lower on the evidence ladder than randomised trials.

Industry Context

Canine and feline lymphoma is one of the cancers that most often brings pet owners into referral clinics, and it is a category where standard chemotherapy protocols vary widely in response rates. Pet medication selection has historically been empirical — pick a protocol, treat, image again, and switch if the animal fails to respond. A functional test that reads actual drug sensitivity before the first infusion changes that sequence, and it changes the economics of the visit: pet owners pay diagnostic fees earlier, and clinics spend less on protocols that were never going to work.

The funding also lands in a period when diagnostics, not hardware, is drawing the money in companion-animal care. AI-assisted tools are spreading through practices because to relieve documentation load and now to support clinical decisions, while strategic buyers consolidate the software layer underneath those decisions. NAVER D2SF’s interest points at something adjacent: it has built a founder network around healthcare startups targeting the North American market, and ImpriMed gives it an asset that already sells into clinics while aiming at human oncology.

Market & Business Impact

$10 million is a working round rather than a victory lap. It funds two things at once: continued expansion of the veterinary business, which pays the bills, and the regulatory work needed to take the platform into human care, where ImpriMed is targeting FDA clearance and CLIA certification by the first quarter of 2027 for a first commercial product aimed at blood cancers and bloodstream infections. In South Korea, a separate piece of the business has already moved — software for predicting multiple myeloma prognosis and therapy response carries an Innovative Medical Device designation from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, and the company works with Catholic University Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, Seoul Asan Medical Center and Gangneung Asan Hospital.

For the human health expansion, ImpriMed is also building a contract research business in drug development, using the same platform to answer questions for pharmaceutical customers. That revenue line is the one most likely to change the company’s shape: diagnostics bill per test, whereas CRO contracts bill per programme.

Companies & Brands Involved

ImpriMed (see its listing context in the GlobalPetIndex company directory) is the operating company. NAVER D2SF is the corporate venture arm of NAVER, founded in 1999 and best known as South Korea’s dominant search engine. LB Investment led the round. Alongside Samsung Securities and Alois Ventures, existing investors BonAngels and Han River Partners increased their commitments. On the clinical side, ImpriMed’s collaborators include Catholic University Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, Seoul Asan Medical Center and Gangneung Asan Hospital, and it cites Mayo Clinic among partners on the human side.

Data & Evidence

$10, 000, 000: size of the Series A2 bridge round (USD, disclosed by NAVER D2SF, Sept. 2026).
$23, 000, 000: ImpriMed’s Series A raised in 2023 (USD, per the announcement).
27, 000+: canine and feline lymphoma tests performed by ImpriMed to date (company figure, 2026).
600+: veterinary hospitals using ImpriMed solutions, across five countries (company figure, 2026).
3.5 million+: data points used to train the company’s predictive models (company figure, 2026).
Q1 2027: target for FDA clearance and CLIA certification (company target, not achieved as of Sept. 2026).

All figures are company-disclosed. ImpriMed did not publish a valuation and did not disclose whether a staged or tranched structure applies to the bridge.

What This Means for the Pet Industry

The interesting part is not the cheque; it is that a precision-oncology company chose veterinary medicine as its proving ground and is now using that revenue to subsidise the human regulatory path. Every instrument maker selling into clinics should read this as a signal: clinics will pay for tests that change the treatment decision on the same day, and the vendors who can show a decision actually changed will have a defensible pricing story. Diagnostics vendors should also expect to be measured on turnaround time and on how their output fits the practice-management system, not just on analytical performance.

Key Takeaways

ImpriMed closed a $10 million Series A2 bridge on September 18, 2026, with NAVER D2SF joining as a new investor and LB Investment leading.
The xCellSense platform has already supported more than 27, 000 canine and feline lymphoma tests across more than 600 veterinary hospitals.
ImpriMed aims for FDA clearance and CLIA certification by Q1 2027 to launch in human blood cancers.
GlobalPetIndex has not independently verified the company’s survival and response-rate claims, which rest on a retrospective study it says was peer-reviewed.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if my cat is in pain?

Cats rarely cry out. Withdrawn behaviour, a change in appetite, hiding, a hunched posture and a reluctance to jump or use the stairs are the signs most often flagged by veterinarians. Those same signs appear with lymphoma and other internal cancers, so most cases reach the point where the vet needs laboratory or imaging answers rather than another examination — which is where diagnostic platforms such as ImpriMed’s sit in the pathway.

How long do cats live with lymphoma?

Prognosis depends on the subtype and on how well the individual animal responds to the drugs chosen. ImpriMed cites a retrospective study showing a threefold increase in survival time and a fourfold improvement in treatment response when care is guided by functional drug testing; GlobalPetIndex has not independently verified that, and it rests on company data rather than a randomised trial.

Why is my dog shaking?

Shaking can indicate cold, pain, neurological disease, low blood sugar or a reaction to medication, and it is one of the vague signs that pushes owners into the clinic. With blood cancers, early symptoms are often even less specific, so questions like this one are usually answered with a workup that combines examination, bloodwork, imaging and — increasingly — laboratory testing rather than with reassurance alone.

Sources

Primary: NAVER D2SF / PR Newswire, ‘NAVER D2SF Invests in AI-Driven Precision Medicine Company ImpriMed’, https: //en.prnasia.com/releases/global/naver-d2sf-invests-in-ai-driven-precision-medicine-company-imprimed-548563.shtml, September 18, 2026
Secondary: vbdata.cn, https: //www.vbdata.cn/intelDetail/1100491, September 18, 2026
Secondary: Tech & Business newswire, https: //techandbusiness.org/newswire/kZCZGldqlbjCf65Ma7X-h, September 2026

ImpriMed Closes $10 Million Series A2 Bridge With NAVER D2SF to Guide Pet Medication Choices in Veterinary Oncology

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