The 2025 –Omics Capex Commercial Overview

How can an industry be worth more than $60 billion, show long-term growth, and still feel like a bloodbath? That was the reality for many people working in –Omics Capex Commercial in 2025.

The biotech downturn did not end in 2024. In 2025, layoffs continued across the biotech capital equipment sector, especially impacting roles in the –Omics Capex Commercial space.

In this first edition of our newsletter, we explore 4 key questions: what happened and why, how companies responded, how commercial teams were affected, and what we think comes next.

This newsletter delves into the intricacies of the –Omics Capex Commercial landscape, highlighting key trends and insights.

1. What Happened (And Why)

Understanding the –Omics Capex Commercial Landscape

Reports show that the biotech instruments market is still in good shape. In 2025, it was worth more than $60 billion, and long-term forecasts continue to predict strong growth [Link]. Yet, layoffs, hiring freezes, and constant “Open-to-Work” posts created a very different picture from what the numbers suggested. This gap between forecasts and daily reality explains much of the stress across the industry. Several factors drove this situation:

In the context of the evolving market, understanding the –Omics Capex Commercial dynamics is crucial for stakeholders.

Geopolitics

US-China trade tensions and export controls disrupted supply chains for high-precision parts and advanced chips that many platforms depend on. Costs went up (sometimes doubling because of tariffs) sourcing became more difficult, and several product launches were delayed [Link].

Meanwhile, China continues to grow as a major R&D and pharma powerhouse [Link]. The MGI/BGI–illumina dispute, which escalated in 2021, shows how China and the West are drifting apart in technology. This split affects prices, access to products, and business partnerships – this gap became even wider in 2025.

Some activity has shifted to Europe, creating new opportunities for the European biotech sector [Link]. However, the EU is still slow and fragmented in its response. Countries are following their own strategies instead of working together, which limits Europe’s ability to attract large investments and compete with the US and China.

Capital flows & Research funding

Capital also kept shifting direction. In 2025, AI became the main focus for investors, pulling money away from high-risk biotech and toward technologies that promise faster returns.

Higher interest rates and political uncertainty – including pressure on NIH budgets, cuts, and rising H-1B visa costs – added more strain on the sector and raised fears of a growing brain drain.

Uncertainty around US research funding pushed many capex providers to move away from NIH-backed academic labs and toward pharma. This shift has not worked well for everyone, as pharma companies have also been cutting costs and canceling projects or putting them on hold. Academic labs delayed purchases, took longer to decide, and postponed equipment upgrades. European customers also became more cautious, especially when suppliers looked financially weak or likely to be acquired.

Selective funding still exists, but VC firms are becoming more careful and taking longer with due diligence [Link]. Still, a few companies recently reported big wins, for example: Alamar Biosciences, Inc. raised over $50 million; Vizgen reported raising $48 million round.

2. How Companies Tackled It

As sales slowed and funding became harder to secure, many biotech companies shifted into survival mode. Common actions included R&D cuts, hiring freezes, layoffs, and tighter control of spending.

Larger companies described these changes as efficiency efforts rather than pullbacks. In genomics, illumina launched an additional $100M cost-cutting program, eliminating more than 300 roles (about 3.5% of its workforce). Smaller competitors followed. PacBio laid off around 120 employees to reduce annual operating costs by $45–50M by the end of 2025. Oxford Nanopore cut about 5% of its workforce to free up money for higher-priority growth areas.

Some companies focused on supporting customers first. To help labs with limited budgets, they introduced lower-cost instruments or temporary pricing options. 10x Genomics used this approach to stay relevant in the market. They, however, also reduced their workforce by about 8% and cut operating expenses by more than $50M. Along the same lines, Ultima Genomics launched a program in April 2025 that gave researchers in Canada and US up to 3 trillion free sequencing reads, helping labs keep their research going despite tight budgets.

Mergers and acquisitions added more pressure. After deals closed, companies often removed overlapping roles. For example, following its acquisition of Akoya Biosciences, Quanterix focused on integration and cut duplicate positions, aiming for about $40M in annual cost savings to move toward profitability faster.

Early-stage companies concentrated on extending their cash runway. Nautilus Biotechnology – one of the examples, reduced its workforce by about 16% and cut R&D and operating costs to fund operations through a planned 2026 product launch.

3. What It Meant for Commercial Teams

One clear lesson from 2025 was that no job in biotech was completely safe. Even sales and revenue-driving roles were affected as companies restructured, narrowed their focus, or exited certain markets.

Roles that took a long time to show results or were not clearly linked to revenue were the most exposed, for example Marketing was often the first function to be cut. Field Sales roles at small companies with limited product lines became vulnerable when products underperformed or strategies changed. Business Development roles focused on early-stage or experimental partnerships were often cut when those partnerships were no longer a short-term priority. FAS roles that worked like sales but did not directly own revenue were also at risk. Most layoffs were not based on individual performance. Decisions were driven by regional results, role clarity, and how directly a role contributed to revenue.

Roles still in demand were in clinical- and translational customer-facing teams. Interestingly, high level leadership teams mostly stayed in place. At the same time, there was an increase in hiring at data-driven service providers. Instead of buying expensive instruments, many labs chose to work with service companies that operate multiple platforms at a reasonable cost. As demand for these services grew, these providers expanded their teams to support more customers.

The situation was different in the US and Europe, but the risk was similar. In the US, layoffs happened fast and at large scale. In Europe, stronger labor laws slowed the process but did not stop it. European teams also faced extra pressure as customers delayed buying expensive equipment without confidence in long-term supplier stability. At the same time, several US companies shifted more of their commercial focus toward Europe.

4. SRC Oracle: Our Prediction for 2026

2026 is likely to bring continued uncertainty. The year began with Thermo Fisher announcing layoffs in North Carolina and Massachusetts, affecting roughly 600 employees. However, there were also signs of optimism, as several biotech companies reported strong expected results for Q4 2025 and are entering 2026 with a positive outlook. Below is a summary of what we expect to see in –Omics Capex Commercial 2026:

More mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring. Large life science players such as Thermo Scientific, Danaher Corporation, Agilent Technologies, Bruker and Bio-Techne will continue to build end-to-end multi-omics portfolios through acquisitions and strategic partnerships. When smaller businesses are folded into larger organizations, further cost cuts and reorgs are likely. Vendors focused on a single technology will be pushed to partner, bundle their products, or consolidate. Across the industry, companies will compete more on offering complete solutions rather than standalone tools.
Funding and capital spending. The effects of the 2025 NIH disruption will continue. Core facilities – not individual PIs – will increasingly drive capex strategy, with purchasing decisions based on shared infrastructure. As a result, sales cycles will become longer and more complex.
Commercial jobs. In commercial roles, risk will stay lower when work is tied to shipped products, installed bases, and repeat sales. Risk will be higher when roles depend on future platform stories, unproven markets, or long-term adoption plans. Changing jobs will remain risky – especially at early-stage or platform-focused companies.
Multi-Omics will be everywhere (but no one will truly have it figured out). In 2026, nearly every major player will talk about multi-omics, as it has become the industry’s biggest buzzword. While many companies will claim to offer integrated solutions, it is unlikely that anyone will yet be able to combine different data types in a way that delivers real value (at prices acceptable for healthcare systems). For most, the technology will still be early and adoption limited. Roche may come closest with Axelios and its scale, while Illumina will continue to promote its multi-omics vision even though its non-genomics businesses generate little revenue.
Clinical focus will drive proteomics, spatial, and single-cell spending. Clinical and translational use cases will drive investment across proteomics, spatial, and single-cell technologies. Companies will prioritize products that can move into clinical use as quickly as possible. Proteomics will shift from early discovery toward decision-grade and clinically useful outputs, while spatial biology will move from experimental setups to standardized, repeatable workflows. In single-cell, budgets will flatten, and spending will move toward higher throughput, automation, and informatics.
AI and informatics will be the fastest-growing segment and the main bottleneck. The AI boom will continue. Tool-using companies such as Natera, Guardant Health Tempus AI, Exact Sciences, and GenDx will keep growing. Open oncology data platforms (such as the great OpenOnco initiative) are hopefully gaining strong traction offering better transparency and more efficient comparison between vendors & test. More often, computing, storage, and data infrastructure will be funded as part of the same investment decisions as lab instruments. However, data analysis will remain the biggest challenge. Genomics data is already hard to handle, and adding more -omics layers will only make it harder. Without better ways to turn data into insight, multi-omics will remain more promise than reality.