The value of digital data of all types has always been important, but with the growth of today’s AI models and the data centers that support them, the need for data has exploded. This is an important driver for the current shortages of digital storage and memory and the significant price increases in these technologies.
Today this data is stored on solid state drives, hard disk drives, magnetic tape and optical storage. Magnetic tape and optical storage are the primary ways that data still having value but not being actively accessed is stored. Magnetic tape continues to evolve and there are at least six optical storage startups active in developing technology for long term data storage. In addition, there are a few startups working on long term digital storage on synthetic DNA, including Atlas Data Storage.
Atlas Data Storage was spun out from Twist Bioscience in May 2025 with $155M in seed funding. The company recently announced Atlas Eon 100, which it said is the first scalable DNA storage service. Below is an image supplied by Atlas of its Eon 100.
Atlas Eon 100 uses synthetic DNA, that is, artificially created DNA sequences that do not derive from a living creature and presumably would have no biological function. The company said that this technology is:
- Compact – 1,000 times denser than magnetic media
- Encoded in a universal, time-tested format
- Efficient to copy
- Easy to transport
- Unparalleled durability
Twist had been working to create a viable DNA storage system for over 10 years. Bill Banyai, Atlas founder said that, “…We intend to offer new solutions for long-term archiving, data preservation for AI models, and the safeguarding of heritage and high-value content”
Atlas officially showcased the Atlas Eon 100 at the Association of Moving Image Archivists, AMIA, Conference on December 3 in Baltimore, Maryland.
There are a few startups, including Atlas, working on archival storage using synthetic DNA. DNA can last for a long time with little degradation if kept in a cooler environment without humidity. The main issues with DNA storage relate to the speed with which DNA base pairs can be written and read.
Data rates for writing and reading DNA are nowhere near other current storage technologies, but the companies working on this technology point out that DNA writing and reading speed have been increasing since the original genomic work early in the 2000’s, driven by the developments of DNA-based medical developments. If these trends continue, DNA data storage could reach speeds that start to approach other technologies in another ten years.
DNA writing has another feature that could be of value for archivists, a single write can produce millions of copies of the same synthetic DNA strands. This creates a natural way to create data redundancy, which can help in recovering data during later reads, but it also allows storing copies of the data in many places, improving the odds that it will survive over the long term.
Atlas Data Storage, spun out from Twist Bioscience in May 2025 announced its Atlas Eon 100 scalable synthetic DNA storage service. Synthetic DNA is one of the technologies vying to support long term data preservation.
