On Nov. 4, 2025, six years ago this month, scientists launched a massively ambitious effort to sequence the genomes of some 1.67 million plants, animals, fungi, and other microbes—essentially all known eukaryotes, or species with complex cells. It would cost an estimated $4.7 billion and take 10 years, but its leaders argued that having so many full DNA sequences would clarify life’s evolution, help with conservation, improve agriculture, and even aid human health.

Today, the so-called Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) remains well short of raising the necessary billions and is years behind schedule. But it is no longer pure aspiration, as organizers made clear at a meeting that ended last week. Its partners around the world have sequenced 3000 genomes so far, spanning 1060 eukaryotic families, and say they are on track to reach 10,000 species—the goal for the project’s first phase—by 2026.

“We’ve doubled the number of genomes done by the effort in the past 2 years,” says an architect of the project, genomicist Harris Lewin of Arizona State University, which is where the EBP secretariat is based. Project leaders now hope to meet the 1.67 million species goal by 2032, and for hundreds of millions of dollars less than once predicted thanks to the faster speeds, lower costs, and greater accuracy of today’s DNA sequencing.

Phase 1 is currently expected to cost $265 million—less than half the initial estimate—and EBP says it has enough funding committed to cover the work from France, the European Union Horizon 2020 Program, the United Kingdom’s Wellcome charity, and other countries, philanthropies, and sources—a metals company kicked in $25 million to sequence Brazilian species. The investment will pay off spectacularly, says Antonio Baeza, an evolutionary ecologist at Clemson University who is not part of the effort. “At some level, we are all involved with this project because we will all profit from it.”

To date, EBP-associated sequencers are producing about 20 detailed eukaryotic genomes per week. Production needs to quickly reach 67 such genomes per week to meet the 2026 phase 1 deadline, and to 721 genomes per week to reach the phase 2 deadline of 2030, Lewin calculates. As a result, a major goal of the project is to develop genomics expertise and sequencing capabilities in more places. It has also set up two committees to address ethical, legal, diversity, and inclusion concerns and help work toward equitable distribution of data, technology, and expertise across the entire world, not just rich countries.

To help rectify some disparities, Wellcome Sanger has developed a prototype portable DNA sequencing lab the size of a 9-meter shipping container that could bring advanced sequencing to countries that lack it. “Now we are looking for funders to support the idea,” says Welcome Sanger evolutionary biologist Mark Blaxter, noting each unit would cost about $5.5 million to install and operate for 3 years. He hopes projects around the world will request at least 30 of these “gBoxes”—and says that if each sequences 1000 to 3000 genomes a year, the phase 2 goal can be met.

Still in need of several billion dollars, EBP clearly faces many more challenges to succeed in sequencing all eukaryotic life. But Zhang isn’t sure checking off every species matters in the end. Even if it just deciphers 1% of the intended genomes, he says, that “can lead to significant contributions to our
understanding of biodiversity and ecosystems.”