The Silicon Valley company that helped turn a $50,000 human genome into a research-lab routine - and, through its PCR-free DNBSEQ technology, kept pushing the price toward zero.
When Complete Genomics opened its doors in a Silicon Valley office in 2005, sequencing a single human genome was a moonshot that cost tens of thousands of dollars and took months. The company's founders - Clifford Reid, the scientist Radoje "Rade" Drmanac, and John Curson - had a contrarian read on that price tag. They treated it not as a fact of biology but as an engineering problem waiting to be solved.
That year, Drmanac and his colleagues invented a way to read DNA that avoided the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification step used by rivals. Instead, they copied a circular strand of DNA over and over into a dense, tangled "nanoball," then packed those nanoballs onto a chip and read them in parallel. The approach - later branded DNBSEQ - is the technical heart of the company two decades later, and it is the reason the name Complete Genomics keeps showing up whenever the cost of sequencing hits a new low.
Complete Genomics is a business-to-business life-science tools company. It designs, builds, and sells next-generation sequencing (NGS) instruments, the chemical reagents and kits they consume, and the software that turns raw signal into readable genomic data. Crucially, it sells the whole chain: sample extraction, library preparation, lab-automation hardware, the DNBSEQ sequencer itself, and downstream data analysis.
That end-to-end scope matters because in genomics the bottleneck is rarely a single step. A lab that can sequence quickly but prepare samples slowly gains nothing. By owning the workflow, Complete Genomics lets customers standardize on one system and one vendor - and it captures recurring revenue from the reagents burned on every run.
The company operates as the Americas arm of MGI, its parent. Instruments that MGI has sold internationally for years reach U.S. researchers and clinical labs through Complete Genomics, headquartered at 2904 Orchard Parkway in San Jose.
The central problem in genomics has always been access: discovery, diagnostics, and population-scale research all stall when each genome costs a fortune. Complete Genomics has spent its whole existence attacking that number. The milestones below track the approximate published cost of a complete human genome using the company's platforms.
Figures are approximate, drawn from company and press announcements; real-world cost varies with scale, coverage, and consumables.
The direction is the story. A $5,000 genome in 2010 was already a headline; by 2023 the DNBSEQ-T20x2 was marketed as the first sequencer to bring that cost below $100. In 2025, MGI and Complete Genomics went further on speed, touting a genome read in roughly ten minutes on the fastest instruments.
PCR-free sequencing built on DNA nanoballs made by rolling circle replication - low duplication, high accuracy.
Ultra-high-throughput sequencer for population-scale and large research programs.
Flexible mid-throughput benchtop systems spanning research and clinical use.
Ultra-high-throughput platform marketed as the first sub-$100 genome sequencer.
Mid-throughput sequencer running a PE150 workflow in about 24 hours at Q40 accuracy.
Antibody-based chemistry and single-tube co-barcoding for long-range information from short reads.
Spatial transcriptomics capturing tissue-wide gene expression at subcellular resolution.
Sample extraction, library prep, and lab-automation instruments completing the end-to-end pipeline.
Complete Genomics occupies the position of a well-funded, technically distinct challenger in a market long defined by Illumina. Its relationship to that incumbent has been pointed from the start - in 2010, months before its IPO, Illumina and Solexa sued the company for patent infringement over its sequencing chemistry. Backed today by MGI's global scale, Complete Genomics competes primarily on price-per-base and on offering an alternative supplier in a field where labs have historically had few.
The revenue engine is the classic "razor and blades" model of the sequencing industry. Customers buy a capital instrument once, then buy reagents, flow cells, and kits for every run thereafter - a recurring stream that scales with how much sequencing a lab actually does. Complete Genomics layers software and service on top.
Its buyers span genomics research institutions and universities, clinical and diagnostic laboratories, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and groups working in agricultural, microbial, and pathogen genomics. Roughly 260 employees support these customers across the Americas, while the broader MGI platform is deployed worldwide.
Early on, the company sold sequencing as a service - researchers shipped samples and received results over the internet - before the industry, and Complete Genomics with it, shifted toward selling the instruments themselves. That pivot, plus the 2013 acquisition, reshaped what the company is today.
Reid, Drmanac, and Curson start Complete Genomics and invent DNA nanoball sequencing.
The company sequences its first human genome and publishes data for three genomes in Science.
Offers whole-genome sequencing for $5,000 and completes an IPO under ticker GNOM in November.
Drives the price of a complete human genome to roughly $2,000.
China's BGI acquires Complete Genomics for about $117.6 million; the company later relocates to San Jose.
Complete Genomics is folded into MGI, serving as its Americas arm for DNBSEQ instruments.
The DNBSEQ-T20x2 is unveiled as the first sequencer to bring genome cost below $100.
Launches the DNBSEQ-T1+ and touts a genome read in about ten minutes on its fastest system.
Inventor of DNA nanoball sequencing in 2005; the technology still underpins the company's newest instruments.
Chairman, president, and CEO until 2015, when he left to found Genos, a consumer-genomics spinoff.
Part of the founding team that launched the company in 2005.
Expertise spans sequencing chemistry, bioinformatics algorithms, lab automation, and spatial biology.
It develops and sells next-generation DNA sequencing instruments, reagents, and analysis software based on its PCR-free DNBSEQ (DNA nanoball) technology, offering an end-to-end genomics workflow.
Yes. It was acquired by China's BGI Group in 2013 and became part of MGI in 2018. It now operates as MGI's Americas subsidiary, headquartered in San Jose, California.
DNBSEQ amplifies DNA into "nanoballs" via rolling circle replication rather than PCR clusters, enabling accurate, low-duplication, PCR-free sequencing.
Both offer high-throughput short-read sequencing, but Complete Genomics/MGI uses PCR-free DNA nanoball chemistry and has aggressively targeted lower per-genome cost, including sub-$100 sequencing.
Research institutions, clinical and diagnostic labs, and pharma/biotech companies use its sequencers, kits, and software for whole-genome sequencing, spatial biology, and related applications.
Contact on file: yzhang@completegenomics.com · +1 650-943-2800 · San Jose, California, USA