Multiomics Is Becoming the Next Growth Engine for Analytical Instrument Vendors

Key Takeaways

• Multiomics — layering genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, and spatial data into a single biological picture — has moved from conference buzzword to a significant area of investment in life science research budgets.
• At ASMS 2026, Thermo Fisher, Bruker, and Waters all introduced new mass spec platforms aimed at deeper, faster proteome and metabolome coverage.
• At AGBT 2026, sequencing vendors showcased chemistries that let a single instrument handle DNA methylation, single-cell transcriptomes, proteomes, and chromatin organization — while spatial biology startups like Stellaromics pushed further into tissue imaging.
• Illumina’s January launch of Connected Multiomics signals that data integration software is becoming as strategically important as the instruments themselves.
• The vendors best positioned for growth are the ones competing on more than one front: hardware performance, omics breadth, and software integration.

Multiomics, the shorthand term for the practice of layering genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, and spatial data into a single biological picture, has moved from conference buzzword to a significant area of investment in life science research budgets. For analytical instrument vendors, that shift matters less as a scientific trend in isolation than as a competitive angle. The opportunity that presents itself isn’t a matter of moving a few more units, it’s the chance to become the platform a lab standardizes on as it stacks additional omics layers onto existing workflows. Three developments from the past few months demonstrate how that competition is playing out in a number of key arenas.

ASMS 2026: The Mass Spec Hardware Race Intensifies

If there was one takeaway from this year’s American Society for Mass Spectrometry conference, it’s that the next chapter of proteomics is being written in hardware, not just software. Our IBO team covered a number of relevant announcements at the show:

• Thermo Fisher Scientific introduced new Orbitrap platforms, including the Orbitrap Tribrid Apex, which provides additional fragmentation methods and a fourfold improvement in speed.
• Bruker countered with its own proteomics and metabolomics push, headlined by the new timsMRMS system, which pushes resolving power into the millions and mass accuracy down to the parts-per-billion range. When coupled with a MALDI source, it enables subcellular imaging.
• Waters offers DESI XS and MALDI ion sources for spatial imaging with its new premium Xevo MRT P10 MS.

The significance of these advances for multiomics is straightforward: deeper proteome and metabolome coverage at higher throughput is what makes it practical to add a protein or metabolite layer to a genomics-anchored study in the first place. Incremental advances in sensitivity and speed directly expands the addressable market for combined-omics study designs. These vendors (and others) made full use of ASMS as a platform-launch event to make the biggest possible splash with leaps in performance calculated to appeal to a multiomics audience.

AGBT 2026: One Instrument as a Home for Many ’Omes

A few months earlier, the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference told a complementary story from the sequencing side. Coverage from Chemical & Engineering News described a meeting split between two competing pressures: aggressive pricing on core sequencing instruments, and a fast-growing appetite for spatial and multiomics capability layered onto those same platforms. While many of the headlines revolved around whether the advent of Roche’s new Axelios sequencer could seriously dent Illumina’s hold on clinical next-generation sequencing, several vendors simultaneously showcased chemistries that let a single sequencer handle DNA methylation, single-cell transcriptomes, proteomes, and chromatin organization, often as add-on assays to hardware customers already own.

Spatial biology was the other key trend of the show. Startup Stellaromics debuted a new instrument for imaging RNA in tissue, part of a broader push toward instruments that convert spatial location into data a standard sequencer can read. Taken together, the AGBT storyline is really a consolidation story: instrument vendors are competing less on how many new instruments they can sell into a lab and more on how many omics layers they can unlock on the one that’s already on the bench. That is a meaningfully different growth model than the sequencing industry’s original volume-and-throughput playbook, and it rewards vendors who can extend an installed base rather than only chase new placements.

Illumina’s Connected Multiomics: The Software Wraparound

The earliest of the three developments, but arguably the one that ties the other two together, came in January when Illumina launched Connected Multiomics, a cloud-based platform built to aggregate and visualize multiomic and multimodal data from Illumina’s own instruments as well as third-party assays. The play is focused squarely on data integration: as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and epigenomics datasets pile up from different instruments and different vendors, the bottleneck shifts from generating the data to reconciling it into something a bench scientist or bioinformatician can actually use.

Why this matters now: this is particularly crucial given the hardware race previously described among multiple different key players in the analytical instrumentation market. Faster mass specs and more flexible sequencers expand what’s technically possible, but they also multiply the number of data formats a lab has to manage across its omics stack. A software layer that can sit on top of and normalize output from that hardware, regardless of the name on the box, is quickly becoming as strategically important as the instruments themselves. Illumina’s early move here is a signal that the vendors capable of playing on both sides, hardware and integration software, can position themselves for a larger share of the multiomics budget than an instrument sale alone would capture.

The Takeaway for Instrument Vendors

These three parallel stories describe a market opportunity that is genuinely broader than genomics, but not evenly distributed. It is particularly concentrated among vendors who can do more than one thing at a time. It is good to push the boundaries of raw analytical performance, and good to expand the omics layers a single platform can support, and very good to be able to provide a platform-agnostic multiomics software solution. But the ability to execute on more than one of these key multiomics ingredients is how leading firms will be able to cement their presence in the burgeoning multiomics space.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is multiomics? Multiomics is the practice of layering genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, and spatial data into a single biological picture, rather than studying each data type in isolation.

What new mass spectrometry instruments were introduced at ASMS 2026? Thermo Fisher introduced the Orbitrap Tribrid Apex, Bruker introduced its timsMRMS system, and Waters introduced its Xevo MRT P10 MS with DESI XS and MALDI ion sources for spatial imaging.

What is Illumina’s Connected Multiomics? Connected Multiomics is a cloud-based platform Illumina launched in January to aggregate and visualize multiomic and multimodal data from both Illumina’s own instruments and third-party assays.

Why are analytical instrument vendors investing in multiomics? Because the opportunity isn’t just about selling more units — it’s the chance to become the platform a lab standardizes on as it stacks additional omics layers, whether through hardware performance, expanded omics coverage, or integration software, onto existing workflows.