BioSistemika's EIC Accelerator DNA Storage: 2023 Sales, 2026 Pitch

Digital data can be written into DNA, which packs far more information into a gram than tape or disk and keeps it for centuries without power. The obstacle has always been cost: synthesising DNA is slow and expensive. BioSistemika, a Ljubljana laboratory software company, told the European Innovation Council it had solved that with a patented encoding scheme and a liquid handling system that shrinks DNA synthesis reactions to picolitres, and that it would reach "commercialization on the global data storage market by 2023", according to the DATANA project objective on CORDIS.

The EU paid. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's October 2020 cut-off, BioSistemika won a grant-only award for DATANA, and the EU contributed €1,867,075 to a €2,667,250 project that ran from 1 May 2021 to 29 February 2024. The final report says the DATANA DNA Data Writer "has been developed and validated". The market launch did not follow. In May 2026, after winning a start-up pitching contest in Maribor, the DATANA team said: "Our primary goal for this year is securing investment so we can bring our technology to market," according to the organisers' press release.

A Software Company With a DNA Side Project

BioSistemika is active and solvent. The Slovenian business register AJPES, as shown by bizi.si, lists two open bank accounts and no blocked ones, and CompanyWall records no insolvency or court proceedings and no tax debt. Both give the registration date as 18 February 2010. The Technology Park Ljubljana member profile describes the company as a spin-off of Slovenia's National Institute of Biology, which DATANA's website lists as a partner.

DNA storage is not what pays the bills. BioSistemika's website sells custom software for instrument makers and laboratories, regulatory consulting for diagnostics software and laboratory digitalisation, with products such as GeneBlink qPCR analysis software and the PlatR pipetting aid. Its register code is 62.100, computer programming, according to CompanyWall. The DATANA page calls DATANA "a project by BioSistemika" aiming at the "first commercially viable benchtop DNA writer". No separate DATANA company turns up in a CompanyWall register search, although the 2020 feasibility report had said BioSistemika would "likely form a spin-off company".

The Technology: Writing Data in Picolitre Drops

DNA storage converts binary data into sequences of the four DNA bases, synthesises those sequences, stores the molecules and reads them back with a sequencer. Commercial DNA synthesis builds strands one base at a time in microlitre volumes, which is far too costly for archiving. BioSistemika's approach assembles data-carrying DNA from building blocks by polymerase chain reaction assembly, according to its 2020 feasibility report, and moves the reactions into droplets of a few picolitres dispensed by inkjet heads. That study found that writing 1 gigabyte at laboratory scale would cost more than €16 million and fill more than 13,000 litres, so reactions had to shrink "at least million-times". It concluded that inkjet heads, handling under 2 picolitres at more than 100,000 operations a second, were the best route, and that costs could then match magnetic tape.

The patents back the approach on paper. An earlier filing, "Nucleic Acid-Based Data Storage", was published as WO 2020/094810, and in March 2023 the company filed two more international applications, one for a device and method for recording data in nucleic acids and one for combinatorial liquid handling, published as WO 2023/187132 and WO 2023/187133, according to the IPqwery patent listing. The DATANA final report confirms "two patent applications at the PCT level". The US counterparts were still pending in that listing.

How far the speed has come is harder to judge. At a DNA storage conference in Rome on 29 May 2026, BioSistemika's Tomaž Karčnik presented a new multi-ink inkjet printhead that deposits droplets of 32 different DNA inks, with "tuneable volume from 30 to 70 pL" at "frequencies up to 200 Hz", according to his slides. The follow-up project's stated target is writing at "10+ MB/s", according to CORDIS. The slides give no writing speed in bytes per second, and no independent test of the DATANA writer has been published.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The European Commission's list of companies selected in the October 2020 cut-off names BioSistemika, Ljubljana, as the only company in DATANA, with grant-only funding. CORDIS classes the award as an SME Instrument Phase 2 action under the Horizon 2020 EIC pilot; the grant agreement was signed on 1 February 2021. BioSistemika had already received €50,000 for a six-month Phase 1 feasibility study, DNA DS, from December 2019 to May 2020, according to CORDIS.

The objective was to "optimize and scale-up" the technology, demonstrate it "at a commercially relevant scale" and commercialise it by 2023. The final report covers the period to 29 February 2024 and says delays from the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain bottlenecks and market conditions forced an extension. BioSistemika's own project list dates DATANA 2021 to 2023. The report states that the writer was developed and validated and that DATANA was shown at CES, the BIO International Convention and IFA Berlin. It also says "several demonstrative commercialization pilots are underway" in disaster recovery, cybersecurity and supply chain tracking, without naming the organisations.

1. Benchtop DNA data writerDelivered"Developed and validated", per the CORDIS final report; no independent test published.
2. Patent protectionDeliveredTwo PCT applications filed in March 2023, per CORDIS and IPqwery.
3. Demonstration at commercially relevant scalePartialPilots claimed on the DATANA site; no third-party report found.
4. Commercial launch by 2023MissedIn May 2026 the team was still raising money to reach market, per the Podim release.

Credit is due for the engineering: a single-company grant produced a working system and a patent family that the follow-up EU project builds on. Karčnik's Rome slides name the "EIC Accelerator pilot - DATANA" as the 2023 starting point of that work. But the project's purpose was a product on the global storage market by 2023, and three years after that date nothing is on sale.

What Has Happened Since the Grant

The DNA storage line has lived on further public money. In 2023 BioSistemika began coordinating PEARL-DNA under the EIC Pathfinder Challenge on DNA-based digital data storage, a €3,999,857.50 project from 1 October 2023 to 30 September 2026 with Leibniz Universität Hannover, the French company Imagene and Technische Hochschule Wildau as funded partners, and HES-SO and Accelopment Schweiz as unfunded Swiss partners; BioSistemika's own share of the EU money is €1,954,437, according to CORDIS. The 2026 slides report a prototype storage container and an automated platform "successfully validated". CORDIS lists the project as closed; the only periodic report published there covers the first year, to 30 September 2024.

The company has also turned to defence. In December 2024 Slovenia's Ministry of Defence announced that BioSistemika was among 73 companies selected from more than 2,600 applicants for NATO's DIANA accelerator in 2025, in the secure information sharing track, with €100,000 of first-phase funding per company. In July 2025 the Slovenian business daily Finance reported that its GuarDNA platform had succeeded in a Eurostars call; the company's project list dates Eurostars GuarDNA 2025 to 2028 and adds DNAmmo, on DNA-based storage of defence data, and DDS-MFS, a 2026 study of the "market feasibility of DNA Data Storage as a Service". The amounts of these awards are not public.

On 14 May 2026, according to the DATANA site, DATANA won the Podim Pitching Competition in Maribor, chosen by jury and audience from five finalists; the Podim deal room dates its report 13 May and the press release puts the final on 15 May. The prize was investor meetings and a fundraising bootcamp, not capital. No funding round for DATANA has been announced. BioSistemika is not in the EIC Fund portfolio: none of the 319 organisations listed on its 16 pages is BioSistemika or DATANA, which is consistent with a grant-only award.

The Money

The parent company is profitable but shrinking. Its accounts, filed with AJPES and shown by CompanyWall, show total revenues falling from €4,140,888 in 2023 to €3,633,299 in 2024 and €3,054,127 in 2025, and net profit from €828,865 to €384,184 and then €28,934. Average staff fell from 40.20 to 37.16 to 35.32. Equity rose slightly to €2,313,008, while total assets fell from €4,581,775 to €2,915,752. The figure AJPES calls total revenues includes all income, not only sales; the accounts as shown do not split out grant income. Bizi.si keeps the full statements behind a paywall, so these figures rest on one free source.

Why Europe Should Care

Data storage is a growing energy question in the EU. The recast Energy Efficiency Directive (EU) 2023/1791 obliges data centres with significant energy consumption to report their energy and water use, under a rating scheme set by Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364, according to the European Commission. DNA archives that need no power once written are one answer, and the EIC made DNA storage one of its 2022 Pathfinder Challenges, aiming to build "a European innovation ecosystem" in the field. BioSistemika now sits at the centre of one of those projects, and its NATO and defence work points to a second market in offline, tamper-resistant archives for sensitive data.

The strategic case is real, but it has not yet produced a European product. The writer that the EIC paid for in 2021 is, five years later, still a prototype looking for investors.

The Verdict

BioSistemika has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.