New memory card uses DNA to store your data — Biomemory's card costs $1,100 to store one kilobyte of data

Biomemory's 1KB "DNA Card". The DNA is stored in the white circle.
Biomemory's 1KB "DNA Card". The DNA is stored in the white circle. (Image credit: Biomemory)

In France, a startup called Biomemory claims to be the first to market with a storage card that can store a single kilobyte of DNA for a fee of €1,000 Euros [h/t Blocks & Files]. We don't need to say the service price is pretty expensive for data storage in 2024. Or...ever. We used to just write these things down, you know.

Anyway, Biomemory claims that its DNA storage method offers some compelling benefits, which could be worth the outlay. It expects each of its 1 KB "DNA Cards" to endure for at least 150 years, which is well outside the lifespan of anyone who could complain about storage failure. DNA Cards seem like an interesting flex, but the real potential of DNA storage isn't in dropping a thousand for a kilobyte, which Biomemory seems to know.

Besides the DNA card focused on front-and-center in the source coverage, Biomemory also discusses a future "Biomemory Prime" storage setup, capable of storing 100 Petabytes for use in data centers. 

The French biotech firm slates Biomemory Prime for a 2026 release, but that may be a little too optimistic since its currently-existing technology takes literal days to read and write data like that. It is more widely expected that glass storage or ceramic storage will take off before this particular DNA technology gets the chance to be relevant.

It's worth mentioning that Biomemory isn't our first sighting of DNA storage technology. Back in 2019, researchers at Microsoft and the University of Washington pushed DNA storage a step forward. And just a few months ago, in late 2023, Chinese scientists designed a functioning, programmable DNA computer

As it turns out, DNA's natural mapping of 4 (ATGC) molecules allows it to easily reach and surpass the limits of binary (1-0) computing— at least in the aforementioned Chinese DNA computer case. While the potential storage density of Biomemory's DNA storage technology certainly seems to leverage DNA's microscopic nature, the "DNA Encode" actually seems somewhat underwhelming.

(Image credit: Biomemory)

If you test Biomemory's DNA Encode functionality on its website, you can type in a text box a maximum of 1,024 characters, or Bytes, and DNA Encode them right on the page. Above, we've embedded a screenshot of us testing this with "hello" getting encoded into a 40-character DNA strand result. Nifty, right?

While that is pretty nifty, a base-4 system should be able to easily surpass a base-2 or binary system in storage efficiency. Biomemory's DNA Encode does not do that— in fact, converting "hello" into regular old binary also spits out a 40-character result.

As cool as functioning DNA storage is, it does seem like some gaps still need to be cleared before it becomes a viable alternative to other data center solutions.

Christopher Harper
Contributing Writer

Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.

  • usertests
    I want small glass/holographic discs that can store hundreds of terabytes or petabytes for millions of years.
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    usertests said:
    I want small glass/holographic discs that can store hundreds of terabytes or petabytes for millions of years.
    Just imagine the number of obsolete adapters to access those discs in the future...
    Reply
  • AgentBirdnest
    How does a user write data to the card? How is it read?
    Or is it a completely nonfunctional conversation piece, and not able to interface with computers?
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    AgentBirdnest said:
    How does a user write data to the card? How is it read?
    Or is it a completely nonfunctional conversation piece, and not able to interface with computers?
    This isn't an actual product yet.
    "The French biotech firm slates Biomemory Prime for a 2026 release"
    Reply
  • bit_user
    I think it's pretty amazing just that they got a test vehicle to work reliably.

    While that is pretty nifty, a base-4 system should be able to easily surpass a base-2 or binary system in storage efficiency. Biomemory's DNA Encode does not do that— in fact, converting "hello" into regular old binary also spits out a 40-character result.
    Could be lots of reasons for that. Perhaps it's meant as a form of parity or for bio-security (you wouldn't want a terrorist or rogue researcher downloading the DNA sequence of some hemorrhagic fever virus and using this to synthesize its DNA).
    Reply
  • stevefan1999
    This is already sufficient to encode an Ed25519 private key in. You can have practically 3 of them in 1K plus some redundant space for error correction (would be interesting to see if Reed-Solomon error correction works on DNA).

    Useful as a heritage to the family's treasure, as it is not easily replicatable and is assumed to be truly unique over at least 100 years. Sure, someone can have stolen it, but nobody can clone your card, given you have not leaked the private key bits electronically. Easily the most expensive way to flex your e-Signature/Certificate.

    How is it better than a Yubikey you might ask? I don't know. It's just cool to do it like that. Ain't nobody is insane enough to do $1000 on 1K DNA in the first place, right?.

    But speaking of which, Yubikeys are easily under attack by world government and national level threat actors -- This shiny DNA card needs some specialized equipment to read and write. Again, its taking data safety to an extreme...
    Reply
  • AgentBirdnest
    The link in the article explains how writing/reading works.

    Write: You give Biomemory (the company) the data that you want to have stored. They give that information to a lab in Germany, who produces the DNA and puts it into that little circular capsule embedded in the card. You get sent two cards.
    Read: If you ever want to read the data, it has to be sent back to the lab. They'll pull the data (which is a destructive process) and they give you the DNA sequence, which you can decode yourself using Biomemory's DNA translator.

    Totally impractical for the average user. :-D But really fascinating.
    Reply
  • thisisaname
    Write once read never?

    Only 150 years! it would last longer with some good parchment and high quality ink.
    Reply
  • AgentBirdnest
    Rough estimates based on quick price checks; forgive me if I'm a bit off...

    Tape - 0.2¢/GB
    HDD - 1.5¢/GB
    BDR - 2.5¢/GB
    SSD - 5¢/GB
    M-DISC - 10¢/GB
    DNA - $1,100,000,000 / GB. :-D
    Reply
  • purposelycryptic
    AgentBirdnest said:
    How does a user write data to the card? How is it read?
    Or is it a completely nonfunctional conversation piece, and not able to interface with computers?
    You DON'T write to it. You give them your KB of data, and they assemble DNA into a pattern equivalent to it. It's strictly ROM. Except currently, they have the only devices to read it, too. So it's more like... OM?
    Reply