= Solexa
{c}
Bought by <Illumina> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-illumina-solexa/illumina-to-buy-genome-firm-solexa-for-600-mln-idUSN1348062320061113[for 600 million in 2007 for 600 million dollars].
This is one of the prime examples of <Europe>'s decline.
Instead of trying to dominate the sequencing market and gain trillions of dollars from it, they local British early stage investors were more than happy to get a 20x return on their small initial investments, and sold out to the Americans who will then make the real profit.
And now Solexa doesn't even have its own <Wikipedia> page, while Illumina is set out to be the next <Microsoft>. What a disgrace.
Here are some good articles about the company:
* http://www.bio-itworld.com/2010/issues/sept-oct/solexa.html (https://web.archive.org/web/20190411005034/http://www.bio-itworld.com/2010/issues/sept-oct/solexa.html[archive]).
Cambridge visitors can still visit the https://pantonarms.co.uk/[Panton Arms pub], which was the location of the legendary "hey we should talk" founders meeting, chosen due to its proximity to the chemistry department of the <University of Cambridge>.
In 2021 the founders were awarded the <Breakthrough Prize>. The third person awarded was Pascal Mayer. He was apparently at Serono Pharmaceutical Research Institute at the time of development. They do have a wiki page unlike Solexa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serono[]. They paid a 700 million fine in 2005 in the <United States>, and sold out in 2006 to <Merck> for 10 billion USD.
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