This article has been updated to include Illumina's recorded gain on the sale.
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Oxford Nanopore Technologies today said that it has coordinated the acquisition of Illumina's 13.5 percent stake in the company on behalf of certain shareholders.
The unnamed investors acquired Illumina's shares for £56.4 million ($90.7 million), and Illumina said in a regulatory filing Friday that it has recorded a $55.2 million gain from the sale of its stake in Oxford Nanopore.
The sale implies a valuation for privately-held Oxford Nanopore of approximately $670 million.
The divestment of Illumina's stake will not impact previous commercialization agreements between the two companies. In June, Oxford Nanopore and Illumina said that they planned to terminate their commercialization agreement on June 30, 2016, but that Illumina would retain rights of negotiation for Oxford's strand sequencing technology until Dec. 31, 2016.
The sale of Illumina's stake in the firm comes a month after Oxford Nanopore raised $63.7 million through a private placement of ordinary shares.
Additionally, Oxford Nanopore said today that it will open up registration for the early-access program of it portable, nanopore-based next-generation sequencer, the MinIon, on Nov. 25, and that registration would remain open through 2014. The early-access program enables researchers to access the technology at no risk and for a refundable $1,000 deposit, according to the company.