Oxford, UK 3/20/18—Oxford Nanopore Technologies, developer of portable, real-time, long-read, low-cost sequencers, has raised $140 million. New investors included GIC, China Construction Bank International and Hostplus. The new funding will be used to expand the company’s manufacturing capabilities and support R&D, including investments in further development of the PromethION for high-throughput modular sequencing and the Flongle for small, single-test sequencing. “Our business is moving quickly, from personal sequencers into high-­end sequencing and distributed analyses,” commented Oxford Nanopore Dr. Gordon Sanghera. Bryan Yeo, chief Investment Officer of Public Equities at GIC, stated, “Oxford Nanopore has a unique business model of providing accessible, real­time DNA analysis technologies that can be applied to pocket-­sized or industrial installations. We believe this will continue to drive growth in their user base as well as in new applications for DNA or RNA sequencing.” Oxford Nanopore also plans to establish a 34,000 ft² (3,159 m²) purpose-built facility in the UK.

In total, Oxford Nanopore has raised £1.5 billion ($2.1 billion at £0.71 = $1), according to the Financial Times. Dr. Sanghera told the newspaper that he expects order value to more than double to total $75 million this year. 

The company currently offers four nanopore-based sequencing systems (the portable MinION and Flongle and the desktop GridION and PromethION), and is developing the SmidgION smartphone sequencer, as well as sample preparation kits and the VolTRAX sample preparation device. Excluding the MinION, the reagent cost for each device is $99 per run and feature price per flow cell range from $500–$2,200 according to the company’s website. The company recently reported that the PromethION, designed to compete with existing industrial-scale systems and featuring 48 flow cells, each running as many as 3,000 channels, has demonstrated runs of 150 Gb per data cell.