Old Dogs, New Tricks: Element Biosciences Launches the AVITI

“Stealth mode” barely scratches the surface of Element Biosciences’s secrecy over the past few years. More accurate would be Game of Thrones finale mode.

The San Diego company’s buzz started in January 2020, when it closed a Series B financing round surpassing $80 million. It followed that by closing a $276 million Series C round 18 months later in June 2021. But when Element was listed as a silver sponsor of this year’s Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) conference—a meeting famous for providing the launchpad of next-gen sequencing (NGS) technologies—it was a clear sign that the veil was about to be lifted. With AGBT postponed until June 2022, the Element of surprise wouldn’t wait. Today, the company opened for business. It hosted an online event to announce a new NGS platform, the AVITI, and released the details of what they have been working on since the company started five years ago.