Ultima Genomics

Ultima Genomics, Inc.

Company type	Private
Industry	Biotechnology
Founded	2016
Founder	Gilad Almogy
Headquarters	Fremont, California , United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Gilad Almogy (Founder)
Products	UG 100 sequencing system

Ultima Genomics, Inc. is a biotechnology firm based in the United States that focuses on developing high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies.

History

Established in 2016 by Gilad Almogy, who previously worked as an engineer at Applied Materials, Ultima Genomics raised $600 million in venture capital funding in May 2022. This investment round included contributions from notable backers such as General Atlantic, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, and Founders Fund. Concurrent with this financial milestone, the company published sequencing results derived from initial collaborative projects with organizations like the Broad Institute and Stanford University School of Medicine.

UG 100 platform

In 2024, Ultima introduced its UG 100 sequencing system, designed to process up to 20,000 human genomes each year while achieving variant detection accuracy on par with or surpassing that of Illumina. Unlike conventional flow cell technology, the UG 100 utilizes a rotating flat silicon wafer and employs two stationary cameras to capture data during approximately 20-hour sequencing runs that generate median read lengths of 300 bases or more.

The platform’s innovative chemistry cycles through one nucleotide type at a time, which removes the need for base calling and produces between 10 and 12 billion reads per wafer. This corresponds to around 2.5 to 3.0 terabases of actionable data per sequencing run. Such advancements enable cost-effective whole genome sequencing and contribute toward achieving the goal of affordable $100 genome sequencing.