What's Going On? (in sequencing)

PacBio has fired 80 people, Oxford Nanopore is trying to sell the company, and Illumina laid off ~300 people.

Illumina have been consistently laying folks off for the part few years, here’s there statement on the most recent layoffs:

“As we continue executing our strategy, and in line with our $100 million cost reduction program, we are taking steps to ensure our talent and operating costs are aligned to enable Illumina’s long-term success. We have made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by approximately 3.5 percent”

In human terms, 300 employees losing their jobs is clearly a visceral and tangible level of human suffering.

But in terms of what it means to a company with 9000 employees, I find it much harder to understand.

How many employees does a sequencing company need? I decided to look at employee counts in terms of how many employees per instrument they have (as of the end of 2024):