The genome doesn’t lie, it whispers secrets most diagnostics can’t hear. But Arima Genomics, Inc. doesn’t just listen. It decodes the full spatial symphony. And this week, the biotech world caught that signal loud and clear.
On June 17, 2025, Arima Genomics dropped two back-to-back moves that would make any chess grandmaster sweat. First, they named genomics OG Tom Willis, PhD as Chief Executive Officer. This isn’t your average suit with a nice resume. We’re talking about the guy who co-founded Sequenta (remember ClonoSEQ? Yeah, that one, NCCN-endorsed, still hitting clinical charts) and built arAllele BioScience before most of biotech could spell “Hi-C.” Former venture partner at Illumina Ventures. Stanford Physics PhD. Yale undergrad. If you’re going to lead a 3D genomics company to clinical dominance, Tom Willis is who you want holding the scalpel.
Then came the second punch: a $22 million Series C, led by Illumina Ventures. That’s right. The same group that backed Willis in the boardroom is now backing him in the lab. Add legendary genomics minds like John Stuelpnagel and Mostafa Ronaghi, PhD to the cap table, plus Co-Win Ventures and Berkeley Catalyst Fund, and you’ve got a roster that reads like the end credits of biotech’s Mount Rushmore.
Credit where it’s due: Siddarth Selvaraj, PhD, Arima’s co-founder and newly minted President & COO, has been building this foundation since spinning out of UC San Diego in 2015. While most were still chasing single-cell trends and buzzwords, Dr. Selvaraj was refining chromatin conformation capture, stacking publications, and assembling a product line that fuses 3D genome architecture with real clinical application. Think gene fusions, long-range interactions, and structural variants that linear sequencing just misses. Missed calls aren’t good in diagnostics. Arima picks up on the first ring.
Now they’re scaling Aventa Genomics, their CLIA-certified clinical lab in Florida, and prepping an arsenal of 3D-based oncology assays ready for clinical war. Built on the Arima-HiC chemistry, 6-hour prep, low input threshold, high fidelity, the platform doesn’t just see the genome, it sees through it. And with integrations for Illumina platforms and open source tools like HiCUP and SALSA, the whole pipeline hits that sweet spot between power and accessibility.
Backed by over 200 peer-reviewed studies and 700+ global customers, Arima Genomics isn’t just a research play anymore. This is precision oncology with structural depth. With 11,000 square feet of R&D muscle in Carlsbad and a product roadmap aimed squarely at clinical relevance, Arima is setting the tempo for a diagnostics revolution that doesn’t just look at the genome, it understands it.
