MONTRÉAL, Oct. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Ultima Genomics, Inc., a developer of ultra-high-throughput sequencing systems, today announced the commercial launch of paired-end sequencing on its UG200™ Series and the availability of Solaris™ 2.0 Max sequencing consumables, which deliver up to 20 billion reads per wafer, double the output of existing Solaris workflows, and enable a $60 human genome. The company will showcase both advances at its User Group Meeting and Workshop at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2026 Annual Meeting, taking place October 20–24 at the Palais des Congrès de Montréal.
Paired-end sequencing reads both ends of each DNA fragment, improving read mapping in repetitive and structurally complex regions of the genome and providing broader compatibility with established analysis pipelines. Combined with the next generation amplification technology in Solaris 2.0, which improves coverage uniformity in high-GC regions and tandem repeats, paired-end reads strengthen Ultima's performance for germline WGS, structural variant detection, and other applications for which data quality at scale is important.
Solaris 2.0 Max doubles per-wafer output to up to 20 billion reads relative to existing Solaris workflows and, paired with the UG200 Ultra, enables sequencing of up to 60,000 30x whole human genomes per year on a single instrument. Ultima will introduce 10 billion and 5 billion read-per-wafer configurations of the Solaris 2.0 Max workflow in early 2027, giving laboratories additional flexibility to match output to project size and budget. Solaris 2.0 Max is available on both the UG200 Series and UG100 Sequencing Platforms. Ultima will continue to support its Solaris 2.0 workflow with 10 billion reads per wafer.
"Paired-end sequencing and Solaris 2.0 Max are the two capabilities our customers have asked for most as they work to deploy Ultima's sequencing technology across more applications, especially germline applications requiring clinical quality," said Gilad Almogy, founder and CEO of Ultima Genomics. "Doubling output while bringing the genome to $60 changes what is economically possible for large programs, health systems, and biobanks—and with paired-end reads and pangenome-aware analysis, they can get ultra-high throughput, low cost, and quality in the same sequencing runs."
Building on Recent Momentum in Germline Applications
The launch follows a period of rapid adoption of Ultima technology in large-scale germline programs, where these new capabilities will be deployed.
"With recent advancements to our platform, Ultima is now successfully powering some of the world's most ambitious genomics efforts, as evidenced by our selection to support the Precure initiative led by Mayo Clinic and Thermo Fisher Scientific," Almogy added. "ASHG is the ideal venue to put these new capabilities directly in the hands of our user community."
Feedback from Early Users
Paired-end sequencing and Solaris 2.0 Max have been deployed at several Ultima customer sites through an early access program and early feedback reflects significant improvements.
"We are a large clinical laboratory focused on delivering the highest quality testing on the most advanced technologies to patients," said David Schlesinger, CEO and Co-Founder of Mendelics. "We have been evaluating Ultima's paired-end sequencing capability for clinical germline applications. The technology represents a significant advance in quality over previous generations of Ultima chemistry, and we have identified many areas of the genome where this capability offers marked improvements over other approaches."
"We ran one of our largest Perturb-seq experiments to date using this chemistry, generating hundreds of billions of reads in just days on a small number of instruments," said Ajamete "Aj" Kaykas, Chief eXploration Officer at Insitro. "Generating data at this scale quickly and affordably lets us routinely run large screens and refine each experiment, exactly what it takes to build foundational datasets."
Ultima User Group Meeting and Workshop at ASHG 2026
Ultima will host its User Group Meeting and Workshop during ASHG 2026, where customers and collaborators will present early data generated with paired-end sequencing and Solaris 2.0 Max, alongside updates on the pangenome-aware analysis workflow under development with NVIDIA using Google's DeepVariant.
User Group Meeting: Tuesday, October 20, 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM ET, Le Centre Sheraton Montreal, Salon A/B/C (Level B) Ultima 2026 UGM Event Details
Workshop: Friday, October 23, 12:15 PM – 1:15 PM ET, Level 5, Room 519A
Ultima at ASHG - Event Details
Booth: Ultima Genomics, Booth #1009, ASHG Exhibit & Poster Hall (open October 21–23)
About Ultima Genomics
Ultima Genomics is unleashing the power of genomics at scale. The Company's mission is to continuously drive the scale of genomic information to enable unprecedented advances in biology and improvements in human health. With humanity on the cusp of a biological revolution, there is a virtually endless need for more genomic information to address biology's complexity and dynamic change—and a further need to challenge conventional next-generation sequencing technologies. Ultima's revolutionary new sequencing architecture drives down the costs of sequencing to help overcome the tradeoffs that scientists and clinicians are forced to make between the breadth, depth and frequency with which they use genomic information. The new sequencing architecture was designed to scale far beyond conventional sequencing technologies, lower the cost of genomic information, and catalyze the next phase of genomics in the 21st century. To learn more, visit www.ultimagenomics.com.
Media Contact
Vikki Herrera
Oak Street Communications for Ultima Genomics
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SOURCE Ultima Genomics
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