Plasmidsaurus
~Mark Budde (Plasmidsaurus CEO) reviewed a draft of this article. He also said they’re looking for a top-tier scientist who can lead the build out of a full Illumina operation in-house. If that is of interest ping me (new@sgenomics.org) and I’ll send an introduction~
One of the biggest surprises of JPM for me was an offhand remark from Gordon in the Oxford Nanopore Q&A where he said: “Our plasmid sequencing workflow is one workflow and it’s generating 10s of millions”. Based on this and other statements, those 10s of millions are likely flowing through Plasmidsaurus who have a multi-million dollar contract with ONT.
Plasmidsaurus themselves have reported an ARR for $40M.
This is a large amount of money to be making from $15 Plasmid sequencing orders. It confuses me, and I wanted to dig a little more into the business.
Summary
Plasmidsaurus are bringing a very different ethos to sequencing service provision. I’ve heard Mark call it SaaS: “sequencing-as-a-service”. Mark told me that:
“Our goal is that, by the end of 2025, a biotech company will typically outsource all DNA sequencing to us instead of using their internal cores. It will be faster, higher-quality, and less effort, at a similar price point.”
The fact that they’ve been able to bootstrap this platform off the back of Plasmid sequencing is impressive.
But I suspect most of the remaining growth is in other applications.
History
Plasmidsaurus’ history is a little complex. It essentially seems to be the merger of two companies SNPsaurus and Primordium. Here’s my take on the company evolution based on public documents and feedback from Mark:
Essentially SNPsaurus was founded in 2013. They offered various sequencing services, I think had a PacBio sequencer and a HiSeq at one point. In 2021 they started offering a Plasmid sequencing service based around Oxford Nanopore for ~$25 a sample (dropping to $10 for large batches). They had one or two drop boxes.
Then in 2021 Primordium Labs was founded. They offered what essentially seems to be the same service (Plasmid sequencing on ONT sequencers).
They were funded by 5050. The founder (Mark Budde) appears to have taken a disruptive startup-style approach. Offering free sequencing, and more widely placing dropbox’s in research departments.
SNPsaurus then rebranded their Plasmid sequencing service as Plasmidsaurus.
I get the impression that there was some brief period of competition, but the fast paced Primordium approach was paying dividends. Ultimately it made sense for the two companies to join forces and they merged under the Plasmidsaurus brand later in 2021.
The company has a total of 73 employees that I can see on LinkedIn, possibly ~100 in total. The vast majority of these appear to be in the US, with 4 in the UK and perhaps a few others elsewhere.