Gilad Almogy is an Israeli-American tech entrepreneur. He is the founder of Ultima Genomics, a biotechnology company noted for developing a high-throughput machine that can sequence DNA for $100.
Biography Almogy was born in Israel and was educated in Jerusalem. After finishing his elementary and high school education, he completed BSc in Mathematics and Physics at Hebrew University. He then relocated to the United States, where he pursued a Ph.D. in Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology. Early on, his academic focus was quantum optics instead of biology or genetics. After graduating, Almogy spent years working in the semiconductor industry, where he learned about scaling complex technologies. For more than a decade, he worked at Applied Materials, where he rose from a division general manager for wafer inspection to senior vice president.
Startups After working at Applied Materials, Almogy founded a startup solar company called Cogenra together with Vinod Khosla and Samir Kaul. This was eventually bought by SunPower. In 2016, he launched Ultima Genomics, a startup that develops and manufactures systems for high-throughput DNA sequencing. In a report, Almogy stated that he established the company with a team of biologists and chemists, who were former employees and acquaintances. He also maintained a machine-learning and bioinformatics team in Israel. Ultima Genomics attracted attention after it announced it was able to develop a human genome sequencing technology for $100 compared the $500–600 cost from other biotech competitors such as Illumina, Inc. This cost efficiency, according to Almogy, creates hyper-elastic growth that brings Moore's law-like dynamic to biology through the scaling of DNA reading. Almogy is also a director of SolarEdge Technologies, Inc. He has invented at least 80 patented technologies.
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