BillionToOne

Founded in 2016 by Dave Tsao, Oguzhan Atay, and Sukrit Silas, BillionToOne is a DNA diagnostic company originating from Y Combinator's S17 accelerator batch. It is located in Palo Alto, California, and uses diagnostic DNA testing that quantifies molecular level bodily changes.

BillionToOne received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2020, for its SARS-CoV-2 test that removes the process of Ribo Nucleic Acid (RNA) extraction, a time-consuming step in COVID-19 testing. BillionToOne developed a COVID-19 testing method called the qSanger-COVID-19 assay. It uses different instrument sets and chemicals than other methods that were applied in 2020. BillionToOne partnered with SwiftBiosciences to manufacture the COVID-19 assay kits and began international distribution in May of 2020.

qSanger^TM technology is a patent-pending test developed by BillionToOne that works to detect viral RNA. It is based on the technology in Sanger sequencing, a DNA testing method that determines the nucleotide sequence in DNA molecules, also known as the "chain termination method."