Pacific Biosciences unveiled new chemistry and a reusable‑consumable workflow aimed at lowering per‑genome costs for high‑accuracy long‑read sequencing, and the company secured selection of its HiFi platform for South Korea’s national pangenome reference project. PacBio said updated Sprq‑Nx chemistry and automated SMRT‑cell washing could reduce consumable costs by up to 40% for high‑throughput customers. Separately, Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency chose PacBio HiFi to generate a telomere‑to‑telomere pangenome, targeting more than 1,000 genomes for integration into global reference efforts. Together the product updates and national contract indicate intensifying competition in large‑scale population sequencing and growing demand for long reads in structural‑variation‑rich regions.