Reading DNA: the hundred-thousandfold curve that swamped Moore's Law

Key points

Key takeaways from The Bear Roars interview with Watchmaker Genomics co-founder and CEO Trey Foskett (September 2026):

The curve that beat Moore's Law. Foskett argues that the falling cost of reading DNA has been one of the most powerful forces on the planet for the last 25 years — a steeper improvement curve than Moore's Law that, in his view, has gone largely unnoticed.

10 years and $3 billion. He recalls the Human Genome Project, which took roughly 10 years and around $3 billion to produce a rough draft of the human genome in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

A couple of hundred dollars, a day or two. Today, Foskett says, he can sequence a very high-quality genome for a few hundred dollars and within a day or two.

A hundred-thousandfold collapse. The cost of sequencing a genome has fallen by five orders of magnitude alongside an increase in performance — a combination that, in his words, swamps Moore's Law.

A quiet quarter-century of progress. He describes genomics as one of the most powerful forces on the planet over the last 25 years, compounding largely unnoticed next to the more celebrated computing curve.

Watchmaker's role in reading DNA. Foskett places Watchmaker Genomics squarely inside this disruptive technology — the company has to be, in his words, "in our own very small ways part of this very disruptive technology around reading DNA."

Read more: YouTube — The Bear Roars (September 2026)