How Big Could Pacific Biosciences Get?
The gene sequencing company is one of the top venture fundraisers of the year so far, with a $68 million round in August that took its venture haul to $266 million. It has spent $180 million of that money and hired 280 people -- all but 60 of them in research and development -- and it hasn't even shipped a product. That's been promised for the second half of next year, and CEO Hugh Martin said production is on track. But a $1.2 million grant that Pacific Biosciences announced today from the National Institutes of Health is just as exciting, Martin said, even though the amount pales in comparison to the venture capital the company has raised, because it could allow Pacific Biosciences to get into new businesses that go way beyond gene sequencing. "This was completely not planned from the beginning," Martin said. "We've built a phenomenal piece of detection technology" to observe individual small molecules "and (it turns out) we're just scratching the surface in what we've learned."
