ILMN stock drops as rival startup wins $600M VC funding (NASDAQ:ILMN)

Illumina (NASDAQ:ILMN) ended Tuesday as the worst performer in the S&P 500 after Ultima Genomics, a rival gene sequencing company, announced it received about $600M funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, and Khosla Ventures.

Newark, California-based Ultima Genomics also announced a low-cost sequencing platform called $100 genome to sequence the human genome below the current costs.

“Our architecture is intended for radical scaling, and the $100 genome is merely the first example of what it can deliver,” the company said, announcing plans to lower the costs further.

“We are committed to continuously drive down the cost of genomic information until it is routinely used in every part of the healthcare system,” it added.

Ultima Genomics is valued at several billion dollars, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. A company representative declined to comment.

“Investors had suspected Ultima to be the dark horse – the specs unveiled in the preprint paper hold up to the hype,” Evercore ISI analyst Vijay Kumar noted after a research paper highlighted the company’s platform over the weekend.

“If these performance metrics are validated by external users and the system proves out to be robust enough, Ultima has the potential to disrupt the market,” he added.

Illumina (ILMN) shares have lost more than 41% over the past 12 months, as shown in this graph.