This new DNA storage system can fit 10 billion songs in a liter of liquid — but challenges remain for the unusual storage format
US biotechnology company Atlas Data Storage has launched a synthetic DNA storage system capable of holding 1,000 times more data than traditional magnetic tape.
The product, called Atlas Eon 100, claims it will store humanity’s “irreplaceable records” for thousands of years. These include family photos, scientific data, corporate documents, cultural objects and original versions of digital artwork, films, manuscripts and music.
“It is the culmination of more than ten years of product development and innovation across multiple disciplines,” Bill Banyaifounder of Atlas Data Storage, said in a statement. “We intend to offer new solutions for long-term archiving, data preservation for AI models and safeguarding valuable assets and content.”
Basically, all digital data is just a series of 1s and 0s in a defined sequence. DNA is similar in that it is made up of defined sequences of the chemical bases adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T).
DNA data storage works by mapping binary code onto these bases; for example, a coding scheme might assign A the value 00, C the value 01, G the value 10, and T the value 11. Artificial DNA can then be synthesized with the bases arranged in the corresponding order.
For the Atlas Eon 100, the DNA is then dehydrated and stored as a powder in sturdy steel capsules 0.7 inches high (1.8 cm). It is only rehydrated when it must be sequenced and its bases transcribed into binary.
More useful than magnetic tape
A single quart (one liter) of DNA solution can hold 60 petabytes of data, the equivalent of 10 billion songs Or 12 million HD movies. This makes the Atlas Eon 100, announced December 2, 1,000 times more storage dense than magnetic tape.
For context, approximately 15,500 miles (25,000 km) of 0.5-inch-wide (12.7 mm) LTO-10 tape, a standard high-capacity storage medium, would be needed to hold the same amount of data.
This storage density will make transporting large amounts of data easier than with conventional hard drives or reels of tape. DNA is also known to keep its shape for centuriesmaking it a remarkably stable medium for retaining data over very long periods of time.
Atlas Data Storage claims its product is stable in an office environment with 99.99999999999% reliability, but the capsules can also withstand temperatures as high as 104°F (40°C). On the other hand, the magnetic tape disintegrates in about a decade even with temperature and humidity controls.
Optical media, such as CDs and DVDs, typically degrade within 30 yearsuntil hard drives run out about 6 or 7 years old before showing signs of deterioration. In less than 3 hours at 158°F (70°C), a flash memory cell can “age” as much as it normally would in a month.
Atlas also claims that its DNA storage service offers a simpler way than other media to back up its customers’ data. Indeed, once a strand is encoded, enzymes can be used to make more than a billion copies in just a few hours.
A solution for a data-hungry company?
According to Atlas, the company generates 280 PB of data every minute. It presents its DNA data storage as a potential solution to the proliferation of digital datawhich has been massively exacerbated by the generative phenomenon artificial intelligence (AI) boom.
However, biotechnology faces a major challenge: synthesizing encoded artificial DNA remains a fairly time-consuming process compared to, say, saving a photo to an existing hard drive. Twist Bioscience, the former parent company of Atlas from which it inherited its DNA synthesis process, currently has a delivery time of between 2 and 8 working days on gene and oligo orders (short and long DNA strands).
Sequencing is also notoriously expensive; it costs about $30 USD to read a gigabase of DNA, the equivalent of approximately 250 GB of data. It also takes a long time, with another recent resolution on DNA storage reporting that it takes 25 minutes to recover a single file. Nevertheless, Atlas Data Storage claims that modern DNA sequencers “improve throughput and reduce costs 1,000 times faster than Moore’s Law.”
That said, due to the time required to synthesize and sequence DNA, the DNA Data Storage Alliance noted in 2025 that they did not expect DNA to be used for large-scale archival data storage for three to five years.
Professor Thomas Heinis, a professor of computer science at Imperial College London who studies DNA-based data storage, is skeptical about the lack of hard data published by Atlas on the performance of the Atlas Eon 100. He pointed to the fact that Catalog DNA, which had made similar promises about its Shannon storage solution, went bankrupt a few months ago.
“I have no doubt that they have built an impressive device, but it is difficult to appreciate it without concrete information,” he told Live Science, adding that the main challenge in commercializing DNA storage is synthesis, not sequencing.
“It sounds trivial, but if the cost of writing/synthesizing is not competitive, then there is no point in reading/sequencing cost-effectively. You cannot read (cheaply) what you cannot afford to write. Currently, synthesis is orders of magnitude too expensive, while sequencing is closer to tape, but even more expensive. Although I am a strong proponent of DNA storage, many technological advancements are needed and I have yet to see no one with an economically viable solution.”
