The BGI Genomics IPO – Is This a Chinese Illumina?
The Chinese are some of the most fascinating people on the planet as far as we’re concerned, all 1.379 billion of them. They mastered medicine long before the West did, they love to ride bikes, they have some of the best and most widely varied Chinese food of any country out there, they love to speak Engrish (though they’re now working on fixing that), and they are in sole possession of the world’s giant panda population which they occasionally dole out in diplomatic gestures of kindness. The Chinese are curious people with a tendency towards anthropomorphism, which shouldn’t be confused with a lack of mental maturity when it comes to understanding all things technology. If there is one race out there that might start bio-hacking themselves using gene editing, we’d put our money on the Chinese. In fact, they’ve already started working on it. This is why we were particularly interested to see BGI Genomics (SHE:300676) debut their IPO a few days, and as investors, we want to know more.
