Element's Vitari sequencer targets $100 genome, company claims

On Tuesday, in the Hongdae district of western Seoul, Element Biosciences opened its global road show with a demonstration of a machine that fits on a laboratory bench. The company, backed by Samsung Electronics as its largest shareholder, used the Shift Your Science event at the Ryse Hotel to show Vitari, a high-throughput DNA sequencer, and to announce the first shipments of Cytos, a platform for studying cells.

DNA sequencing reads the genetic code of a sample, letter by letter. Element was founded in San Diego in 2017 to make that reading more accurate and cheaper, and it entered the market in 2022 with its AVITI system. Samsung joined the company's Series D round in July 2024, when Element said it had raised over $277 million. In June 2026, Samsung invested another $175 million in the Series E round and became the largest shareholder.

Vitari is designed for large-scale sequencing. Element claims it reaches 99.99 percent accuracy and processes more than five times as much data per run as existing systems, which could bring the cost of sequencing a human genome down to $100, from a going rate of $200 to $800. The device supports whole-genome sequencing for rare disease research, cancer studies and single-cell RNA analysis. Preorders are open, with deliveries expected to begin by the end of 2026.

Cytos works differently. It lets researchers measure several properties of individual cells at the same time: their physical structure, the proteins they express and their gene activity. Combining these measurements, according to Element, can show how cells respond to a drug and help explain the mechanisms of disease, which could speed up drug discovery. Element CEO and co-founder Molly He said the goal is to let scientists observe cellular changes and analyze them together, a task existing methods have struggled with.

For laboratories, the practical gain would be sequencing on a benchtop device, with the cost of a genome falling toward $100 if Element's figures hold. For now, those figures come from the company. Researchers from Samsung Medical Center, KAIST, Yonsei University College of Medicine and institutions in Japan, Australia and India were scheduled to present in Seoul. Element's road show continues in San Diego, Munich, Boston and Stockholm later in 2026, which will show whether the machine performs the same way outside its maker's own demonstrations.