10x Genomics (TXG): Bringing Biological Data To A New Level

Why Spatial Biology Matters

The past decade has seen the rise of precision therapies and Next-Generation-Sequencing (NGS), which have revolutionized diagnostics and medicine. These methods allowed doctors and researchers to move from an approach that targets the whole body (like with drugs) to tailored and targeted treatment or detection methods focused on a specific type of cell or DNA sequence.

Still, this is not the last level of how deep biological analysis could go. Even in a given organ or type of tissues (like, for example, the brain or a tumor), individual cells will act very differently from one another.

So while tools like NGS sequencers agglomerate the data from thousands or even millions of cells simultaneously, researchers often need to figure out what is happening in one single cell at a time, with a nanometer level of precision. To reach this level of detailed analysis, a new field of science was created: spatial biology. And one company is emerging as a leader in this field: 10x Genomics.

What Is Spatial Biology?

What Spatial Biology Measures (and Why)

Instead of looking at the “mix” of molecules in a sample, spatial biology can determine where in a tissue or a single cell a molecule of interest, like a specific sequence of RNA, is located. And this is either in 2D or 3D.

This will tell researchers how cells interact with each other, how defense mechanisms activate, how a cell reacts to contact with a virus, and so on.

This also has the advantage of providing much more sensitive data. While data of something happening in just a few cells could be drowned in a larger sample, the targeted approach of spatial biology can reveal the key roles of localized phenomena or rare cell types.

More importantly, the data collected can be contextualized with the broader activity of surrounding cells in a tissue, which is a lot more informative than analysis from an isolated single cell or microdissection.

“Spatially resolved transcriptomics highlights how these technologies have matured and expanded to give biologists exceptional views of the biology of single cells while retaining information on spatial context.”

Nature: Method of the Year 2020: spatially resolved transcriptomics

Key Spatial-Omics Modalities

Spatial Biology can be used to understand living cells and analyze specific signals. Among the many types of biological activities that can be measured this way, the most important that can be mentioned are:

• Spatial Genomics: the analysis of the DNA and genome.
• Spatial Transcriptomics: the analysis of mRNA, the actual activity from the encoding of the genome.
• Spatial Proteomics: the analysis of expressed protein profiles like antibody receptors, immune markers, etc.
• Spatial Metabolomics: the analysis of specific biomolecules, like hormones, cancer biomarkers, etc.

10x Genomics: Company & Platforms

10x Genomics is one of the pioneers in single-cell analysis and spatial biology, having developed equipment in this field since its foundation in 2012. One of its founders, Serge Saxonov, was previously the founding architect and director of research and development at genetic testing company 23andMe.

10x Genomics did its IPO in 2019 and has been releasing a series of single-cell and spatial biology analytical tools since.

Source: 10x Genomics

Chromium, Visium HD, and Xenium

In total, the company has sold 7,000+ analytical instruments, of which 1,050+ were sold in 2024 alone.

While pure spatial biology is driving the company forward technically, it is the single-cell analysis Chromium platform that has sold the most for now, with 5,800+ units sold.

Source: 10x Genomics

Source: 10x Genomics

The two other main platforms of 10x Genomics are Visium and Xenium:

• Visium is using NGS (genomic) to create a whole transcriptome for each small 2-µm area of a tissue sample.
• Xenium is using imaging (microscopy) to measure the gene expression of targeted genes (up to 5,000 genes) for each individual cell in a tissue sample.

Overall, Visium will be most useful to researchers to give them an overview of the biological activity in a given area, while Xenium will give insight into specific activities they already know to be of interest in a specific case.

As more data accumulates and Xenium’s capacity grows, universal single-cell analysis at the tissue sample scale is likely to become the gold standard of biotech research.
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10x Genomics Financials

This generated $611M in revenues in 2024, of which $493M in consumables.

The high percentage of consumables in total revenues illustrates that the company’s business model is similar to NGS company Illumina (ILMN +4.72%), where the sale of equipment is driving long-term recurring sales of consumables (chemicals, dyes, reagents, etc.) to keep them operating.

Acquisitions

The company completed its technical offering by acquiring in 2018 Epinomics, a biotechnology company focused on epigenetics, and Spatial Transcriptomics, a biotechnology company focused on spatial genomics.

It was followed by the acquisitions of CARTANA (molecule detection in the cell – “in-situ”) and ReadCoor (sub-cellular nanoscale 3D resolution) in 2020, Tetramer (high-definition tissue analysis) in 2021, and Scale Biosciences (scalable single cell analysis) in 2025.

This makes 10x Genomics not just an innovator, but also an aggregator of these emerging technologies from smaller innovative teams. 10x Genomics then incorporates them into a cohesive whole and common analysis platform and tools, allowing researchers to use only one device for multiple types of analysis.

This is important for efficient R&D, as comparing results between different types of machines and analytical methods can be difficult, reducing the usefulness of disparate results from multiple sources.

Spatial Biology Market Outlook (2025–2030)

Due to the extreme level of information it provides, spatial biology is a method in direct competition with many less precise and powerful legacy biological analysis tools, from decades-old ones like ELISA, Western blot, and PCR, to more advanced ones like flow cytometry or bulk sequencing.

Source: 10x Genomics

Spatial biology, also sometimes called spatial-omics, was a $711M market in 2024 and is projected to reach $1,7B by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 16.3%.

It is worth noticing that while the 2020 recognition by Nature as a promising technique was the first inflection point, it is only now that technology is entering an exponential phase from a revenue growth point of view.

Source: GrandView Research

For now, the market is mostly dominated by academic and research institute activity, with biotech and pharmaceutical companies only starting to adopt the technology for their own applied R&D needs. A lot of top scientific publications are now using 10x Genomics machines, a growing trend, as publishing new discoveries is a very competitive field.

Source: 10x Genomics

As top scientific publications increasingly use spatial biology for new insights, the technology is becoming more commonly adopted in research labs, which need to stay competitive to keep publishing in top scientific journals.

It is, however, the private sector demand that is expected to drive the majority of new sales of the sector moving forward, as the technology is now better understood, cheaper than before, and a larger academic knowledge base of published scientific papers and databases, as well as trained biologists, can be leveraged to develop practical applications.

Overall, 10x Genomics expects to see biopharma revenues grow from 20% of its total revenues to 50% in the coming years.

Competition in Spatial & Single-Cell Biology

Spatial Biology

Overall, the market for spatial biology can be divided by the companies operating in it, based on their geographical reach and technical expertise. Only 10x Genomics and Bruker can have both a global geographical reach and move beyond niche technical capacities.

Source: GrandView Research

Bruker bought the assets of 10x Genomics’s competitor NanoString when it filed for bankruptcy in 2024. It merged NanoString with previously acquired Canopy Biosciences and Acuity Genomics to form Bruker Spatial Biology.

NanoString and 10x Genomics have been involved in a complex patent-infringement litigation since 2023, which has significantly contributed to NanoString’s 2024 bankruptcy.

In May 2025, the two companies agreed to end their dispute after signing a global cross-license agreement, ending all litigation. This is overall good news for shareholders of both companies, as this removes a lot of uncertainty linked to these legal cases.

“We’re excited to be able to focus on the impact and value that these products provide for discovery research, translational research and precision medicine, and we’re happy to have the distraction and expense of these legal cases behind us.”

Mark R. Munch, Ph.D., President of the Bruker Nano Group

Single-Cell Platform Rivals

The market for single-cell analysis is a little more competitive, with, for example, new activity from large lab instrument makers like Qiagen moving with the acquisition of single-cell analysis company Parse Biosciences for $225M + milestone payments.

This segment might become progressively more competitive, as single-cell analysis becomes more common and new technology challenges 10x Genomics’ dominance with its Chromium platform.

However, as this market is a $3.5B market growing at 14.5% CAGR, there is likely space for more actors, each carving a specific niche depending on technical requirements and preinstalled base of equipment in a given research lab.

From Research to Diagnostics: What’s Next

For now, spatial biology is mostly a research tool, used to better understand living tissues’ activities at a level of precision never reached before. This is very similar to how advanced NGS (Next-Generation Sequencing) tools were used from the 1980s and 1990s to further our understanding of biology, both human and non-human.

Progressively, as these instruments got cheaper and knowledge accumulated, new applications kept being developed using NGS, and they became basic equipment of all biolabs.

Today, simple genetic tests are a common diagnostic tool, as illustrated by the omnipresent PCR tests during the COVID pandemic.

The same direction is likely to be seen with spatial biology. From the current academic research usage, usage by biotech and pharmaceutical firms will keep growing. First in their own applied research progress, and then in diagnostics: initially for serious cases like cancer, increasingly for mundane check-ups.

This gives companies like 10x Genomics a large space to expand, as this technology matures and continues to grow, similar to its older NGS counterpart, Illumina.

AI and Spatial Biology: Training Data for Bio-AI

AI analysis is becoming a crucial tool in biology, perhaps not surprisingly, given that the main obstacle to progress in biotech is the sheer volume and complexity of biological data.

By creating a fully contextualized, coherent, and spatially resolved data set, 10x Genomics’s equipment is specially fit to create the dataset on which biotech AI can be trained.

“They have already advanced biological discovery, and with 10x’s innovation engine, that impact will only accelerate.

This integration will help the research community generate the high-quality data needed to drive AI-powered breakthroughs in medicine.”

Garry Nolan, PhD, co-founder of Scale Biosciences (acquired by 10x Genomics in 2025)

This, in turn, can be used to improve researchers’ understanding of what data still needs to be generated, creating further demand for spatial biology analytical tools.

Source: 10x Genomics

AI also makes spatial biology more useful, as it can deal with the literal flood of data that the technology creates.

Data analysis has long been one of the biggest bottlenecks in single-cell and spatial research.

Our recent partnership with Anthropic helps address this issue and makes analysis more accessible by integrating it with Claude for Life Sciences.

With Claude, researchers can now perform common analytical tasks through a conversational interface that complements our existing computational workflows.

Serge Saxonov – CEO & Co-founder of 10x Genomics

For example, such insights can enable scientists to better categorize tumor types and make more accurate predictions of responses to therapy, ultimately leading to improved patient outcomes.

Source: 10x Genomics

Ultimately, enough gathered data could help create the so-called “Holy Grail of biology“: an AI-powered virtual cell realistic enough to allow for the perfect simulation of the real living cells.

There are strong reasons to expect that scaling of data will result in vastly more capable models, as it has in just about every other application of artificial intelligence.

These models hold the promise of transforming science, drug discovery, and ultimately human health. We believe that virtual cell efforts represent one of the most important trends in biology in the coming years.

Serge Saxonov – CEO & Co-founder of 10x Genomics

Conclusion

10x Genomics is transitioning from the stage of an innovative startup with an interesting technology to a key industry partners for most biological research organizations, both academic and commercial.

The data-rich understanding of living cells and tissues created by spatial biology and single-cell analyses creates the kind of information that arrives at the right moment to be leveraged by increasingly powerful AIs.

In turn, this should speed up discovery speed in biotech and make spatial biology equipment even more useful, creating a positive feedback loop.

This is not to say that the company is a perfectly safe investment. As it operates in a quickly changing field, competition is still intense, and NanoString, now resurrected inside Bruker, or companies like Qiagen, could be serious competitors.

But for now, 10x Genomics’ quick innovation and strategic acquisitions have put it in a solid position to dominate the field.