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ENCODING NOW · SESSION hlx-2026-02-27

1 exabyte. 1 vial. 10,000 years.

Managed DNA data archival for enterprise. Encode once. Retrieve in hours. Outlast every storage medium ever built.

helix-cli v3.8.1 — encode session
RUNNING
[11:53:02]

TRUSTED BY CDOs AT FORTUNE 500 · BIOTECH COMPLIANCE · NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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COST ANALYSIS$/TB/year · cumulative over retention horizon

The longer you store, the worse their math gets.

Cloud cold-tier pricing compounds annually with egress fees. Tape requires migration every 3–5 years. DNA synthesis cost is amortized at year 0 — no compounding, no migration, no surprises.

CUMULATIVE COST $/TB · 100-YEAR HORIZON
DNATapeCloud
$0$100$200$300$400$500$600$700yr0yr20yr40yr60yr80yr100DNATapeCloud

Data: AWS Glacier Deep Archive, LTO-9 tape TCO, Helix DNA managed service. Updated Q1 2026.

AT 100 YEARS · PER TB

Cloud Cold Tier$2,300+
LTO Tape (TCO)$1,200
Helix DNA$120

DNA is 19× cheaper than cloud at century scale.

MIGRATION EVENTS (100 YRS)

Tape

Every 5 years, avg $40k/event

20
Cloud

Platform migrations, avg $180k

4
DNA

Zero. Encode once, done.

0
Storage Method$/TB/yr10-Year50-Year100-YearNote
LTO Tape$8–12$96$500$1,200Migration every 3–5 yrs
AWS Glacier Deep$23$230$1,150$2,300Retrieval latency 12–48h
Azure Archive$21$210$1,050$2,100Early delete fees apply
Helix DNA StorageBEST$12$120$120$120Zero migration cost ever
PHYSICAL METRICS

The physics are not metaphors.

These are measured densities and empirically validated lifespans — not marketing estimates.

Storage Density

215 PB

per gram of DNA

vs. 1 PB per full server rack (SSD)

Physical Volume

1 vial

= 4.7 PB encoded

0.003g DNA · 2mL sealed ampule

Decode Fidelity

99.9999%

bit-perfect retrieval

4× redundancy, sha3-512 verified

DENSITY COMPARISON · EQUIVALENT 1 EXABYTE STORAGE

Helix DNA
0.005 grams2 mL sealed vial
LTO-9 Tape
55,556 cartridges~33 m³ library
SSD Array
1,000,000 drives~1,200 m³ rack space
HDD Array
3,333,333 drives~4,000 m³ floor space

Source: Published DNA storage density (Church Lab, Harvard), drive spec sheets.

DURABILITY TIMELINE · PRESENT → YEAR 12,000

LOG SCALE
HDD / SSD
Mechanical failure, bit rot~10 yrs
Optical (BD-R)
Dye degradation, oxidation~50 yrs
LTO Tape
Magnetic decay, binder failure~30 yrs
M-DISC Optical
Best optical, limited density~1000 yrs
Helix DNA
Chemically inert, error-corrected10,000+ yrs
Nowyr 100yr 1,000yr 10,000

DOWNLOAD: DNA Storage Durability & Compliance Whitepaper

PROTOCOL

From petabytes to a sealed vial — in three steps.

STEP 01

Encode

Your data. Our pipeline.

Helix ingests your archive via secure transfer agent or direct S3/Azure Blob connector. Data is chunked, error-corrected with RS codes, and mapped to a 2-bit nucleotide encoding scheme (A=00, C=01, G=10, T=11). Redundancy: 4× default.

[helix]$ helix encode --source ./archive.tar --output hlx://vault/genomics-2024
[helix]✓ RS encoding complete · 2,048 blocks · 4× redundancy

Ingestion rate

847 GB/s

Encoding latency

< 2 hours/PB

Error correction

RS(255,239)

COST CALCULATOR

Calculate your archive cost.

Adjust the parameters below. See your projected cost comparison instantly — no sales call required.

317 TB
1 TB100 PB

Configure your parameters and press Calculate to see your projected cost comparison.

Results appear instantly. Full report requires work email.

SOC 2 Type II

Annual third-party audit. Encryption at rest and in transit.

99.95% Uptime SLA

Decode requests fulfilled within 12 hours, contractually guaranteed.

HIPAA & GxP Ready

Pre-validated for biotech, pharma, and government archive compliance.