Oguzhan Atay from BillionToOne
Duy Ho Photography
Shares of BillionToOne soared on the primary day of trading, giving the corporate a market capitalization of $5.8 billion.
OGuzhan Atay, a Turkish immigrant with a Ph.D. He studied systems biology at Stanford University and founded BillionToOne in 2016 with the concept of developing noninvasive prenatal genetic testing for common diseases corresponding to sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis. Today the Menlo Park, California-based company went public on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. Raised $273 million in an offering that has been scaled up to satisfy investor demand. At the tip of trading, shares rose greater than 80% to $109 from the offering price of $60, giving it a market capitalization of $5.8 billion.
That makes BilliontoOne the rare medical diagnostics company to have a successful IPO this 12 months, which is even more odd given the federal government shutdown.
But BillionToOne, which began with prenatal blood tests after which expanded into cancer testing, has built a major, fast-growing business. It’s booked $209 million in sales over the past 12 months (until June 30) from 508,000 genetic tests, in line with the offer document. In comparison, revenue last 12 months was $153 million, up 19-fold from $8 million in 2021. While the corporate is losing money, those losses have narrowed to simply $4 million in the primary half of 2025.
At $109 per share, Atay’s stake in the corporate (including stock and vested options) could be value $335 million. His co-founder David Tsao, the corporate’s chief technology officer, holds a roughly similar stake value nearly $325 million.
“We exceeded all forecasts at the time,” said Atay, the corporate’s co-founder and CEO Forbes. “We’re not trying to change the market or convince Congress to change reimbursement. We’re taking technical risks [side]to do something that isn’t just 5% better.”
The early detection of cancer is “the great attraction of our company”.
Its patented technology can detect a single DNA letter from a single DNA molecule out of a complete of three billion in a human genome (hence the corporate’s name) and help determine whether a developing baby is vulnerable to serious illness based on a maternal blood sample. Blood tests are far less invasive than traditional tests corresponding to amniocentesis, through which doctors collect amniotic fluid to check for genetic disorders.
Atay, 37, and Tsao, 36, began with two common genetic blood disorders: sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia. In 2023, they expanded into cancer testing and commenced testing for individuals who already had cancer. BillionToOne continues to work on recent diagnostic products in oncology, including people who may very well be utilized in early detection of cancer, one in every of the holy grails of testing.
Still, diagnostics is a troublesome and capital-intensive field, and enormous testing firms like Natera, with a market value of $27 billion, have been around for a long time. “It was very difficult at the beginning,” Atay said, noting that BillionToOne was not only unknown to doctors, but in addition out of network to insurers. “We were overwhelmed and outnumbered in every region we served,” he said. To attract customers throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, he arranged meetings with doctors of their parking lots and brought masks he specially ordered from overseas. Today, BillionToOne is connected to 70% of insurers, Atay said.
“He’s humble, but he’s a beast,” said Shahram Seyedin-Noor, managing partner of Civilization Ventures, a healthcare investment firm that was one in every of BillionToOne’s early investors.
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BillionToOne raised its first $15 million in March 2019. Since then, the corporate has raised nearly $375 million from investors including Norwest and Baillie Gifford. The company doesn’t need the capital from today’s IPO, but decided to go public to draw institutional investors, Atay said.
Today, in its offering document, BillionToOne forecasts that the marketplace for its existing genetic tests is value greater than $20 billion, while its pipeline of products in development could push that value to $100 billion. While prenatal testing is a giant deal, early detection of cancer may very well be much more vital. “That’s what makes our company so attractive,” Atay said.
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