DNAnexus raises $68 million to develop multiomics platform

Alex Guest | Posted on 7 February 2019 |

DNAnexus, the bioinformatics company, has closed a $68 million financing round from a combination of existing investors, including GV, Foresite Capital, TPG Biotech, WuXi NextCODE and Claremont Creek Ventures, and debt and equity from Innovatus Capital Partners.

The company’s cloud solutions enable researchers to work with genomic data. Its platform solves the challenge of analysing massive volumes of sequencing data; integrates genomic data with clinical and other phenotypic data; and facilitates collaboration between teams of researchers.

This new funding round is to support the deployment of the company’s Apollo platform for multiomics and clinical data exploration, analysis, and discovery.

“The next wave of biomedical insights will be derived from cross-institutional collaborations that generate massive volumes of clinical and multi-omics data. We are proud of our work dedicated to improving how global research and development organizations leverage large biomedical datasets to develop and deliver precision medicine solutions”, said Richard Daly, Chief Executive Officer at DNAnexus.

DNAnexus was founded in 2009 by a group of Stanford alumni, Andreas Sundquist, Arend Sidow, and Serafim Batzoglou. GV (formerly Google Ventures) was an early investor in the company co-leading the company’s second, $15 million financing round with TPG Biotech in 2011. Both investors, as well as First Round Capital, obtained board seats, while Google’s involvement extended to a wider technology collaboration, which is ongoing. Google’s DeepVariant learning technology was integrated onto the DNAnexus platform in 2017.

This latest round comes after a $58 million round in 2018, and two rounds each of $15 million in 2014 and 2015, in addition to the $15 million in 2011, and a first round of $1.6 million in 2009