While the San Diego-based company currently dominates the marketplace, some of the patents protecting its technology expire this year, opening the door for more competition. Ultima Genomics of Newark, California, emerged from stealth mode earlier this year promising a $100 genome with its new sequencing machine, which it will begin selling in 2023. Meanwhile, a Chinese company, MGI, began selling its sequencers in the United States this summer.
Illumina shares fell 5% over the two days after the announcement, suggesting investors remain pessimistic about the company’s outlook amid its troubles with Grail. The stock has dropped 50% this year.
This looks like it might answer Gwern’s question from 2018:
This trend need not peter out, as the oncoming datasets keep getting more enormous; consumer DTC extrapolating from announced sales numbers has reached staggering numbers and potentially into the hundreds of millions, and there are various announcements like the UKBB aiming for 5 million whole-genomes, which would’ve been bonkers even a few years ago. (Why now? Prices have fallen enough. Perhaps an enterprising journalist could dig into why Illumina could keep WGS prices so high for so long…)
Illumina used patents to defy the god of the straight lines and now it seems their newly announced machine likely can’t match the price of startups.
One interesting quote from the article:
From another article:
This looks like it might answer Gwern’s question from 2018:
Illumina used patents to defy the god of the straight lines and now it seems their newly announced machine likely can’t match the price of startups.