Pacific Biosciences of California, a provider of long-read sequencing platforms, has secured $900m in investment from Softbank Group subsidiary SB Management to support its future growth initiatives.
The company offers genomic analysis systems, which will help scientists gather insights to address complex genetic challenges.
The investment from SB Management will be made in the company’s convertible senior notes.
Pacific Biosciences president and CEO Christian Henry said: “This strategic investment by SoftBank validates our leadership position in the long-read DNA sequencing market and enables us to further accelerate our growth strategies.
“Currently, we offer one of the most accurate and complete sequencing solutions on the market and this financing will enable us to continue to expand our product portfolio and advance our commercial expansion as we seek to transform the field of genomics.”
Pacific Biosciences provides advanced instruments, which are based on Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) sequencing technology.
The technology facilitates a comprehensive view of genomes, transcriptomes and epigenomes to access the full spectrum of genetic variation in any organism.
Scientists across the world use PacBio sequencing systems to boost discovery in human biomedical, research, plant and animal sciences, and microbiology.
In October last year, the company launched the Sequel IIe System, based on its SMRT sequencing technology. The new system is designed to directly produce highly accurate long reads (HiFi reads) with improved speeds to offer scientists with a comprehensive view of genomes and transcriptomes.
Pacific Biosciences has also announced a multi-year collaboration with Invitae, a medical genetics company, in January.
The collaboration is aimed at developing a production-scale high-throughput sequencing platform, leveraging Pacific Biosciences’ HiFi sequencing to expand Invitae’s whole genome testing capabilities.
In January, Quest Diagnostics signed an agreement with the US federal agency Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the sequencing of Covid-19 gene variants.
