After nearly 10 years, Twist Bioscience spin-off plans Terabyte-scale DNA storage in 2026, intending to store 13TB of data in a 'single drop of water.'
Atlas Data Storage plans terabyte-scale DNA storage by 2026, aiming to store massive data in tiny, highly dense volumes.
(Image credit: Atlas)
- DNA storage offers unprecedented data density compared to conventional tape and disk media
- Atlas Data Storage relies on custom chips to synthesize DNA for practical archiving
- Reading DNA data uses sequencing methods with built-in error correction mechanisms
After nearly ten years of internal research and commercialization planning, Atlas Data Storage, a spin-off built on Twist Bioscience technology, has outlined a roadmap toward terabyte-scale DNA data storage by 2026.
Atlas Data Storage states that its immediate objective is to demonstrate storage densities high enough to place 13TB of digital data into a volume described as a single drop of water.
It argues that DNA offers a fundamentally different storage profile from magnetic tape or disk-based media.
Density potential of DNA storage
According to the company, DNA storage provides a 1,000 to 1,500 times improvement in volumetric density compared with standard LTO-10 tape cartridges.
Based on ChatGPT calculations, a standard LTO-10 cartridge has external dimensions of 105.4 x 101.6 x 21.6mm, which results in a volume of roughly 231 cubic centimeters.
This translates to a native capacity of 40TB and a volumetric density of about 0.173TB per cubic centimeter.
Using these values, a single drop of water, approximately 0.05cm³, could store only about 8.6GB, while a sugar-cube-sized volume of 1cm³ could hold roughly 173GB.
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Applying the 1,500x density improvement claimed by Atlas, the calculations indicate that a single drop of water, about 0.05cm³, could theoretically store around 13TB of data, and a sugar-cube-sized volume of 1cm³ could hold more than 260TB.
These figures illustrate the density potential of DNA storage and show how it could condense data that would otherwise require thousands of LTO-10 cartridges into very small volumes.
However, the figures depend on assumptions related to usable volume, error correction, and replication overhead.
The Atlas Data Storage system relies on custom chips that synthesize DNA strands encoding digital information, a process described as data writing.
Current prototypes reportedly operate at gigabyte scale, while the next generation is expected to reach terabyte-scale output.
Reading stored data relies on sequencing methods optimized for known DNA formats with built-in error correction, which allows lower cost and faster retrieval than general-purpose sequencing.