The story
Illumina was founded in April 1998 by David Walt, Larry Bock, John Stuelpnagel, Anthony Czarnik, and Mark Chee. While working with CW Group, a venture-capital firm, Bock and Stuelpnagel uncovered what would become Illumina's BeadArray technology at Tufts University and negotiated an exclusive license to that technology. In 1999, Illumina acquired Spyder Instruments (founded by Michal Lebl, Richard Houghten, and Jutta Eichler) for their technology of high-throughput synthesis of oligonucleotides. Illumina completed its initial public offering in July 2000.
Illumina began offering single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping services in 2001 and launched its first system, the Illumina BeadLab, in 2002, using GoldenGate Genotyping technology. Illumina currently offers microarray-based products and services for an expanding range of genetic analysis sequencing, including SNP genotyping, gene expression, and protein analysis. Illumina's technologies are used by a broad range of academic, government, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and other leading institutions around the globe.
On January 26, 2007, the company completed the acquisition of the British company Solexa, Inc. for ~$650M. Solexa was founded in June 1998 by Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman to develop and commercialize genome-sequencing technology invented by the founders at the University of Cambridge. Solexa, Inc. was formed in 2005 when Solexa Ltd reversed into Lynx Therapeutics of Hayward.
Illumina also uses the DNA colony sequencing technology, invented in 1997 by Pascal Mayer and Laurent Farinelli and which was acquired by Solexa in 2004 from Manteia Predictive Medicine. It is being used to perform a range of analyses, including whole genome resequencing, gene-expression analysis, and small ribonucleic acid (sRNA) analysis.
In June 2009, Illumina announced the launch of their own Personal Full Genome Sequencing Service at a depth of 30X.
Until 2010, Illumina sold only instruments that were labeled "for research use only"; in early 2010, Illumina obtained FDA approval for its BeadXpress system to be used in clinical tests. This was part of the company's strategy at the time to open its own CLIA lab and begin offering clinical genetic testing itself.
Illumina acquired Epicentre Biotechnologies, based in Madison, Wisconsin, on January 11, 2011. On January 25, 2012, Hoffmann-La Roche made an unsolicited bid to buy Illumina for $44.50 per share or about $5.7 billion. Roche tried other tactics, including raising its offer (to $51.00, for about $6.8 billion). Illumina rejected the offer, and Roche abandoned the offer in April.
In 2014, the company announced a multimillion-dollar product, HiSeq X Ten. In January 2014, Illumina already held 70% of the market for genome-sequencing machines. Illumina machines accounted for more than 90% of all DNA data produced. In 2020, the company invested in the acquisition of the pre-commercial firm Enancio, which had developed a DNA data compression algorithm specifically targeting Illumina data capable of reducing storage footprint by 80% (e.g. 50 GB compressed to 10 GB).
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On July 5, 2016, Jay Flatley, who had been CEO since 1999, assumed the role of executive chairman of the board of directors. Francis deSouza, who had been president of the company since 2013, took on the additional role of CEO.
In late 2015, Illumina spun off the company Grail, focused on blood testing for cancer tumors in the bloodstream. In 2017 Grail had planned to raise $1 billion in its second round of financing, and received funding from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos investing $100 million in series A funding, and with Illumina maintaining a 20% holding share in Grail. Grail is working with a blood test trial with over 120,000 women during scheduled mammogram visits in the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as a partnership with the Mayo Clinic. Grail uses Illumina sequencing technology for tests. Grail planned to roll out the tests by 2019. In September 2020, Illumina announced a proposed cash and stock deal to acquire Grail for $8 billion.
In November 2018, Illumina proposed the acquisition of Pacific Biosciences for $8.00 per share or around $1.2 billion in total. In December 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued to block the acquisition. The proposed deal was abandoned on January 2, 2020, with Illumina paying Pacific a $98 million termination fee.
In March 2021, the FTC sued to block Illumina's $7.1 billion vertical merger with Grail. In July 2021, the European Commission opened an in-depth investigation into the Grail acquisition by Illumina. Against the orders of active investigations by both the US FTC and the EU European Commission, Illumina publicly announced it had completed its acquisition of Grail on August 18, 2021. The FTC urged Illumina to "unwind" the merger shortly after, and in October 2021, the European Commission ordered Illumina to keep Grail a separate company and adopted interim measures to prevent harm to competition, or face penalty payments up to 5% of their average daily turnover and/or fines up to 10% of their annual worldwide turnover under Articles 15 and 14 of the EU Merger Regulation respectively. In September 2022, a US administrative judge ruled against the FTC's efforts to prevent the acquisition on antitrust grounds. In April 2023, the FTC ordered Grail to be divested by Illumina. In July 2023, the European Commission imposed a €432 million ($476 million) penalty on Illumina for closing the Grail acquisition without EU approval.
In September 2022, Illumina launched NovaSeq X and NovaSeq X Plus. The NovaSeq X Plus can sequence 20,000 genomes per year, compared to 7,500 per year of Illumina's previous machines and generate up to 16 Tb of data per run. The series includes redeveloped reagents, dyes, and polymerases which can be shipped at ambient temperature.
In June 2023, deSouza resigned as CEO of Illumina, and was replaced by interim CEO Charles Dadswell, the company's general counsel. Also in June 2023, Hologic CEO Stephen Macmillan was named non-executive Chairman of the Board of Directors.
In September 2023, Agilent Technologies' senior vice president Jacob Thaysen was appointed CEO.
In October 2023, the European Commission ordered Grail to be divested from Illumina within the next twelve months. Illumina said it would explore a third-party sale or a capital markets transaction if it fails to win its ongoing challenge in court. In June 2024 Illumina has completed the spin-off of Grail, keeping only a minority stake of 14.5%. The 2022 appeal in the case against the European Commission has been settled in September 2024 in favour of Illumina and declaring the merger outside the Commissions jurisdiction. With the repealed decision Illumina concluded the fine to be void.
On February 4, 2025, China placed Illumina on its "Unreliable Entities List" as part of its response to U.S. President Donald Trump's second round of tariffs against it. The company, which competes with the Chinese biotech firm BGI in gene-sequencing, said in a statement that it has had a long-standing presence in China and complied with all the laws and regulations of the countries in which it has operated. On March 4, 2025, China's Ministry of Commerce resolved to prohibit the export of Illumina gene sequencers to China.
Acquisition history
The following is an illustration of the company's mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs and historical predecessors:
From Wikipedia’s article on Illumina, Inc., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7