Johnson & Johnson MedTech spent $400 million upfront to acquire Laminar in November 2023. Less than three years later, the company handed the program back.
On September 11, 2026, newly formed Jaguar LAA announced that it had acquired the Laminar assets from J&J for undisclosed terms. The transaction marks J&J’s exit from LAA closure after 34 months and a pivotal trial that was suspended during recruitment.
There is another wrinkle. Jaguar was formed by Santé Ventures alongside members of Laminar’s management team, with Dr. Jason Rogers serving as CMO. Santé was also an original investor in Laminar. In other words, one of the investors that helped sell Laminar to J&J is now involved in bringing the program back into a venture-backed company.
When J&J acquired Laminar, the company was still pre-pivotal. Its approach differed significantly from established devices in the category. Instead of placing an expanding plug inside the left atrial appendage, Laminar’s technology gathered and twisted the appendage closed from within, effectively eliminating the structure rather than occluding it.
The pivotal trial, NCT06168942, was designed to enroll roughly 1,500 patients with non-valvular AFib and compare the technology against Boston Scientific’s Watchman and Abbott’s Amulet.
Recruitment was suspended in mid-2025 because of potential unwrapping of the appendage after implantation, associated with clinically significant leaks.
That setback ultimately left J&J with a $400 million upfront investment in a program that never made it through its pivotal study.
Compass AI shows eight left atrial appendage closure financings and acquisitions since January 2023. Remove the acquisitions, and disclosed private capital invested across the category over roughly three and a half years totals about $80 million.

That puts the scale of J&J’s original Laminar investment into perspective.
The most recent private financing in the dataset was AuriGen Medical’s €1.5 million bridge in November 2025. That round came from 190 individual investors through a crowdfunding platform, including several practicing European cardiologists.
At the other end of the market sits Watchman.
Boston Scientific reported $1.96 billion in Watchman revenue in 2025, an increase of nearly 30%. In Q2 2026, Watchman generated $507 million, up 4.3%. Boston Scientific reduced its 2026 guidance in April and again in July, and now expects flat-to-low-single-digit Watchman growth for the year, with mid- to high-single-digit declines in the second half.
Watchman holds roughly 70% of LAAC, compared with approximately 20% for Abbott’s Amulet.
The more revealing shift may be where these procedures are happening.
In Q2, Boston Scientific’s concomitant procedures, meaning LAA closure performed during an ablation, increased more than 60% year over year and 11% sequentially. Stand-alone procedures, which represented the remaining two-thirds of cases, declined in the low teens.
That shift increasingly puts the procedure in the electrophysiology lab while the patient is already undergoing treatment in the left atrium.
For J&J, that made Laminar strategically interesting. Biosense Webster already has an established electrophysiology footprint through CARTO, giving J&J an existing presence in the same labs where concomitant procedures are growing.
Instead, the company is now leaving the category.
J&J’s exit does not mean other companies have abandoned the appendage. W. L. Gore acquired Conformal Medical on January 5, 2026. Medtronic has taken a different route, acquiring the Penditure exclusion clip through Syntheon, launching it in the U.S. in 2023, receiving CE mark in October 2025, and selling more than 10,000 clips globally.
Laminar has taken yet another path.
Rather than disappearing after the suspended trial, the technology, team, and clinical program have moved from one of medtech’s largest strategic acquirers back into a venture structure. Santé Ventures and Jaguar LAA now have the opportunity to determine what comes next for a technology that J&J once valued at $400 million upfront.
The asset did not disappear. It changed hands, and the next chapter of LAA closure may look very different from the one J&J bought into in 2023.
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