Cancer detection startup Grail will be acquired by DNA sequencing machine maker Illumina for $8 billion in cash and stock, the companies announced Monday.
Grail originally spun out of Illumina, which is the company’s largest shareholder. Its backers include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Grail was preparing to go public, filing paperwork with the SEC earlier this month. The company, which had raised around $2 billion, plans to roll out a multi-cancer early detection test in 2021.
Founded in 2015, Grail is led by Hans Bishop, the former CEO of Juno Therapeutics, a Seattle biotech startup also backed by Bezos that went public in 2014 and was sold to Celgene four years later for $9 billion.
Shares of Illumina were down more than 8% in Monday trading.