French DNA coming to a datacenter near you soon

French DNA storage champion Biomemory has said that it is on track to deploy its technology in datacenters later this year after snapping up assets from Boston-based bio computing specialist Catalog Technologies.

The French company said that it “intends to launch the first commercial solutions leveraging the asset acquisition in 2H 2026.” This would, it continued, make it “the first DNA Data Storage provider to be deployed in datacenters, offering a tangible, sustainable and secure alternative to traditional data storage media.” 

Biomemory’s DNS storage strategy has, to date, centered on its “patented method for the volume production of biosafe DNA and enzymatic consumables,” which it says can ensure a competitive operating cost (OpEx) for DNA storage.

This underpins its proprietary storage container technology for DNA strands carrying encoded data, which it says provides reliable data retention for 50 to 150 years with an IT-compatible Uncorrectable Error Rate. Although it adds that DNA is inherently stable over extremely long periods – even millennia under very cold and hermetic conditions.

The firm says that it “industrializes this process into rackable storage servers designed for datacenter environments.” It positions this as another tier of storage within traditional multitier architectures, with the DNA carrying servers accessed via interoperable APIs.

Biomemory says it uses the “S3 defacto standard interface”, with DNA data storage suitable for archiving, regulated and AI training data sets, as well as compliance records and critical backups.

Catalog was founded in 2016, and unwrapped its prototype DNA writer, Shannon, in 2018. In 2022, it announced a collaboration with Seagate on DNA-based storage and computation.

Last year, in a paper in the ACM Journal of Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems, it sought to demonstrate “a new unified approach to DNA-based data storage and computing”, using “Shannon” to automate “the collocation of components into a reaction, reaction incubation, and the collection of identifiers from the reactions.” The paper described the writer as “an array of printheads that dispense proprietary inks”, and claimed it offered advantages in both energy consumption and scalability over other traditional technologies like tape. 

Biomemory said both firms’ technologies “synergistically align, combining enzymatic bio-secure DNA blocks assembly with scalable high-speed printing, high-throughput reading and a low error-rate.”

This should rapidly yield new commercial grade data storage or cybersecurity solutions, it said, but also holds out the prospect of “industry leading” search and computing capabilities.

Biomemory also gains a bridgehead in North America, with both R&D and production and customer support across the water, which should smooth things in these trade warring times.

The French firm’s co-founder and senior innovation officer Stephane Lemaire, is on the board of the SNIA’s DNA Storage Alliance, as is (was?) David Turek, CTO of Catalog.

The Biomemory/Catlog tieup is not the only DNA storage advance this week. Belgian nano-electronics firm Imec and DNA specialist Atlas Data Storage announced a partnership which will combine Atlas’ ASIC and scalable DNA synthesis technology with Imec’s silicon developing and fabrication chops. Imec will also invest in the US firm.

To support Atlas’ approach, Imec says it has co-developed and manufactured a “a custom, exceptionally dense nano-scale array of electrochemical cells on top of a control CMOS ASIC designed by Atlas.” The chip can orchestrate and control millions of individual synthesis sites.