>To give you a perspective, the amount of DNA sequencing required to fully research Grail's test has been estimated as the equivalent of decoding the genomes of about 400,000 people.<p>I've been a customer of Illumina, and I've been to their HQ in San Diego - they do so much sequencing (much more than just building, testing and selling the machines) that I wouldn't be surprised if they already had a significant chunk of those 400,000 (edit: as a comparison, 23andMe has the data of about 1.2 million people, but it's not whole genome sequencing - I assume keep the samples and make that a reality, though). They have a few hundred sequencers up and running in the part of the building we went to, with total numbers not being disclosed.
The title is stupid. The author says nothing to back why he thinks Bezos and Gates are wrong...except just saying it is based on breakthrough research. Can breakthrough research be unprofitable?...uh, yes. But I would rather have some billionaires personally, invest it rather than a government agency who can have their funding cut by short sighted politician, or companies whose investors are looking for short term profits.<p>And WTH does cloud computing have to do with it. I highly doubt gates and Bezos are backing it because they will be utilizing their cloud capabilities...quite a stretch. They will make orders of magnitudes more directly from their cancer detection product, than the extra hours of compute time needed!