In one of the biggest private financings in biotechnology so far this year, Sequenom (San Diego, CA) raised $37 million in mid-April to support the launch of its DNA analysis products later this year. Its first commercial offering will be a mass spectrometer accommodating its low-density DNA chips, together with robotic, readout, and informatics peripherals. The share price in this offering, $6.50, represents an increase of over 100% on the previous finance round, which took place in January 1998. This gives Sequenom a valuation "north of $100 million," according to Toni Schuh, Sequenom's executive vice president for business development. He says that new money means the company is now ready to launch its system into the R&D market for genotyping (gene discovery and pharmacogenomics in essence) and to prepare to commercialize in the routine DNA diagnostic area. Schuh believes that within two or three years there will be substantial demand for for genotyping. Some of that will be accelerated by the burst of activity in human SNP mapping (see p.526).