A letter from our founder & CEO

Although genomics has begun to touch many areas of human health, we at Ultima Genomics believe this is merely the tip of the iceberg: Not only have the genomes of fewer than 1 in 10,000 people been sequenced, even our full germline genome doesn’t begin to capture the richness of valuable genetic information in our 10’s of trillions of cells, the free DNA circulating in our blood stream, or the surrounding environment. That information contains the source code for our health, wellbeing, disease, and immune response. Our mission at Ultima is to continuously drive the scale of genomic information to enable unprecedented advances in biology and improvements in human health.

In the semiconductor industry, I saw firsthand how the relentless drive to scale computing power transformed our lives, enabling applications no one could have ever foreseen. We aim to unleash the same relentless scaling in sequencing, because we hold a deep-seated conviction that boundless genomic information will lead to scientific discoveries and improvements in human health far beyond what anyone can currently imagine.

Today society cannot afford to deploy genomics at the scale necessary to match biology’s complexity. The high cost of sequencing continuously forces scientists and clinicians to make tradeoffs between the breadth, depth, and sampling frequency with which they use genomic information. Breadth of the populations they sequence, and how much of the genome they examine. Depth to explore cellular heterogeneity and enable early cancer detection. Frequency to routinely monitor the changing biology of our bodies. If we hope to accelerate a future in which data-driven medicine is the standard of care, we need to do more…a lot more.

With this extraordinary opportunity in mind, we assembled a diverse global team, leveraged technology from multiple industries, partnered with the world’s leading scientists and genome centers, and attracted some of the world’s leading investors who share our vision. The outcome of our collective efforts is an entirely new sequencing architecture, built from the ground up to enable radical scaling at every step in its process. We are proud to share with the community our first product using this new architecture – which delivers the $100 genome today.

Our promise to you is that the $100 genome is not our destination – it is only the starting point of what this team and technology can deliver. We’re excited to see the breakthroughs and discoveries our customers will unleash with these ever more powerful tools.

Please join us on this journey!