Swiss Rockets Aims for Sub-$100 Genome with New Sequencer

BASEL, Switzerland – February 23, 2026 – In a bold move poised to shake up the competitive genomics landscape, Swiss biotech accelerator Swiss Rockets AG has announced its entry into the sequencing hardware market. The company revealed plans to launch its CoolMPS 600 mid-throughput sequencer in Q2 2026, a platform it claims will deliver long, highly accurate DNA reads and enable a sub-$100 human genome. The announcement was coupled with the news that Swiss Rockets has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire 100% ownership of Complete Genomics, the U.S.-based developer of the core technology.

This dual announcement signals a major strategic pivot for Swiss Rockets, an incubator primarily known for fostering oncology and precision healthcare startups. By acquiring a key technology provider and launching its own instrument, the company is positioning itself as a direct challenger to established giants in the DNA sequencing market, a sector long dominated by companies like Illumina, PacBio, and Oxford Nanopore.

A New Challenger Enters the Sequencing Arena

Swiss Rockets AG's acquisition of Complete Genomics represents the culmination of a strategic partnership that began in August 2025. The initial contract R&D and licensing agreement gave Swiss Rockets exclusive rights to the underlying CoolMPS technology in major global markets. Now, with full ownership, Swiss Rockets solidifies its control over a potentially disruptive technology and its future development.

The CoolMPS 600 is designed to occupy a strategic niche in the market as a mid-throughput system. While ultra-high-throughput platforms from competitors are the workhorses of large genome centers, the CoolMPS 600 aims to bring the power of long-read sequencing to a broader audience. The company's vision is to decentralize advanced genomic analysis, enabling individual research labs, regional hospitals, and biotech companies to perform whole-genome sequencing locally, with economics previously only achievable at massive scale.

The system is slated to support not only the novel 600-base pair long reads but also the popular and widely used shorter PE150 reads, ensuring backward compatibility for labs with existing workflows. This flexibility could be key to encouraging adoption in a market often characterized by significant capital investment and established protocols.

The Technology Behind the Promise

The performance claims for the CoolMPS 600 are rooted in two proprietary technologies: CoolMPS™ chemistry and DNBSEQ™ DNA nanoarrays. The combination is engineered to overcome some of the inherent limitations of previous sequencing methods.

“At its core, CoolMPS is fundamentally different in sequencing chemistry,” said Dr. Rade Drmanac, its inventor and the chief scientific officer of Complete Genomics. “By regenerating natural nucleotides without permanent DNA scarring, combined with DNA nanoball technology that avoids clonal amplification errors, we start with exceptionally clean template molecules and decode them with high fidelity using brightly labeled base-specific antibodies.”

Unlike methods that use fluorescently tagged nucleotides which can leave behind chemical “scars” on the DNA strand with each cycle, the CoolMPS chemistry uses natural, unlabeled nucleotides. The system detects which base has been added by using fluorescently labeled antibodies that are specific to each of the four DNA bases (A, C, G, T). After detection, these antibodies are washed away, and the extension blocks are cleaved, regenerating a pristine, natural DNA strand ready for the next cycle. According to the company, this scar-less process is what enables the system to generate reads up to 600 bases long while maintaining exceptionally high accuracy.

This chemistry is paired with DNBSEQ technology, which uses DNA Nanoballs created through a PCR-free process. This avoids the amplification errors and bias that can be introduced by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), further contributing to the high fidelity of the final sequence data. The result, as Dr. Drmanac noted, is a powerful combination for analyzing difficult genomic regions and detecting rare genetic variants.

The Race to the Sub-$100 Genome

For years, the genomics industry has pursued the “$100 genome” as a holy grail—a price point that could transform genomic sequencing from a specialized research tool into a routine part of clinical care. While the cost of sequencing has plummeted from the millions of dollars it cost two decades ago, the sub-$100 target has remained elusive, particularly when accounting for all associated costs beyond just reagents.

Swiss Rockets' claim that the CoolMPS 600 can achieve this price point “when the system is fully utilized” places it in direct competition with recent announcements from companies like Ultima Genomics and Element Biosciences. However, Swiss Rockets is differentiating its offering by promising this cost on a mid-throughput machine capable of long reads. This contrasts with many high-throughput systems that achieve low costs through massive scale, often with shorter reads.

The CoolMPS 600 is expected to have a throughput of 2.4 terabases (Tb) per run, capable of sequencing 24 human genomes at 30x coverage within two days. This level of productivity, combined with the low target cost, could make comprehensive whole-genome sequencing (WGS) a viable alternative to less complete targeted panels, even for smaller labs.

Accelerating Precision Medicine and Research

The true impact of the CoolMPS 600 may lie in the scientific and clinical questions it helps answer. The ability to affordably generate single reads of 600 bases has significant implications for advancing precision medicine, particularly in oncology—Swiss Rockets’ home turf.

Longer reads are critical for accurately mapping sequences across complex and repetitive regions of the genome, areas where shorter reads often fail. This improved mapping is essential for the reliable detection of large structural variants, such as insertions, deletions, and rearrangements, which are known drivers of many cancers and genetic diseases.

Furthermore, the technology enables the sequencing of full-length transcriptomes. By reading an entire mRNA molecule from end to end, researchers can more accurately identify different splicing isoforms and gene fusions, which are increasingly recognized as important diagnostic and therapeutic targets in oncology. The high accuracy and long-read capability of the CoolMPS 600 are designed to provide a clearer, more complete picture of the genomic and transcriptomic alterations that drive disease.

With its strategic acquisition and ambitious technology platform, Swiss Rockets AG is not just entering the sequencing market; it is making a clear statement about its intention to reshape it. The company is betting that a combination of long reads, high accuracy, and decentralized affordability is the formula for the next wave of genomic discovery. The genomics community will be watching closely when the first CoolMPS 600 systems become available in 2026 to see if this promise becomes a reality.