Peter Thiel’s Thiel Bio and Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions are among the investors backing health-care company HistoSonics Inc. at a $3 billion valuation — betting that its technology that can help treat tumors using sound waves.

The startup, which currently focuses on liver tumors, will use the fresh $250 million investment from the deal to expand the applications of its ultrasound therapy devices to target growths in the breast, prostate, pancreas and other areas. HistoSonics is also accelerating its work targeting brain cancer.

Founded with research from University of Michigan scientists in 2009, HistoSonics says that sound waves can be an effective alternative to current tumor treatments, and less invasive than more traditional methods including chemotherapy. Chief Executive Officer Mike Blue called the technology “a massive paradigm shift,” in the way tumors are addressed. “We’re going to change health care and cancer forever,” he said.

Blue said poor market conditions pushed him to scrap plans to take his company public earlier this year. Instead he made a deal to sell a majority stake of HistoSonics to a consortium of investors led by K5 Global, Wellington Management, and Bezos Expeditions, the family office of Amazon.com Inc. founder Bezos. Announced in August, the deal valued HistoSonics at $2.25 billion. That investor group also led the most recent funding, with participation from new investor Thiel Bio, a biotech investment firm backed by the billionaire.

HistoSonics will bring in more than $100 million in revenue this year, Blue told Bloomberg.

The company’s procedures use a device about the size of a portable dishwasher that it calls the Edison. During a treatment session a technician remotely controls a robotic arm above the tumor. The arm emits pulsed sound waves to create a series of “bubble clouds” from gasses that occur naturally in human tissue. These bubble clouds form and collapse in microseconds, creating mechanical forces strong enough to destroy tissue at cellular and subcellular levels, Blue said.

Since winning regulatory approval from the US Food and Drug Administration in late 2023, HistoSonics has sold its systems to nearly 150 customers, ranging from small hospitals to the Cleveland Clinic, it said. Each system costs about $1.5 million. The company is also seeking to expand to more countries and is working to gain regulatory approval in Europe, which it expects in mid-2026. Earlier this year, Hong Kong billionaire and philanthropist Li Ka-shing donated one of its products to the University of Cambridge.

Investors are hopeful that the new tool could yield a breakthrough in cancer treatment. Treatment “decisions often force a trade-off between survival and suffering,” said Hannes Holste, a partner at Thiel Bio and director of life science at Thiel Capital, Thiel’s family office. “HistoSonics shows that fundamental technological innovation can free us from such Faustian bargains.”

Blue told Bloomberg the fresh funding will carry his company through to profitability and possibly an initial public offering, which he said could come as early as next year. “This certainly gives us the opportunity to be opportunists,” he said.