Just how far mass spectrometry—the use of tools measuring the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) of one or more molecules present in a sample—has progressed over the past century can be seen in a new exhibit highlighting the development of the technology that has been commissioned by the American Society for Mass Spectrometry and is on display at Clemson University until next summer.
The exhibit begins with a discharge tube, the instrument that led British physicist Sir J.J. Thomson (1856-1940) to discover the electron in 1897, a breakthrough that earned him the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics. Following that are the first mass spectrograph developed in 1919 by British chemist and physicist Francis William Aston (1877-1945), winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the neutron chamber of Sir James Chadwick (1891-1974), the tool that led the British physicist to discover the neutron in 1932, earning him a Nobel Prize in Physics three years later. Those instruments helped researchers lay the foundation for modern mass spectrometry, which has allowed scientists to understand the structure of atoms and the variety of molecules they form.
New chapters in mass spec history will be written at The Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS)’s 2026 International Conference & Exhibition, set for February 7-11, 2026 in Boston. If recent history is any guide, SLAS will see numerous announcements by companies launching new technologies related to mass spectrometry.
Among advances reported in recent months:
- A new cryogenic mass spec approach for depth profiling frozen tiny lipid nanoparticles to reveal the layers and orientation of the constituent molecules, published in May in Nature’s Mass Spectrometry Method Development collection by a team led by researchers at the University of Nottingham’s School of Pharmacy.
- The conversion of large-scale, complex mass spectrometry data into meaningful structural insights through ChemEcho, a machine learning embedding method, published in August by investigators at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and its Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in the American Chemical Society’s journal Analytical Chemistry.
“By applying explainable AI techniques to the Mass Spectrometry Query Language (MassQL) framework, the study vastly enhances the scale and flexibility with which researchers can query MS data,” LBNL science deputy and chemist senior scientist Trent R. Northen wrote in a LinkedIn post.
A pair of reports issued late last year shows mass spec on a path toward steady growth in the coming years. In November, Toward Healthcare projected a doubling of the global mass spectrometry market size over the next decade, from $6.69 billion in 2025 to $7.17 billion this year and $13.33 billion in 2035, based on a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.14%. Also in November, Market Data Forecast projected mass spec soaring from a $6.03 billion market in 2024 to $11.31 billion by 2033, a comparable CAGR of 7.23%.
For the first time, GEN is publishing an A-List that ranks top public companies involved in marketing mass spec systems based on the revenue of the business segments where those sales are centered. Public companies are ranked by their combined revenues for 2024 and the first three quarters of 2025, as disclosed in regulatory filings, press statements, and/or responses to GEN queries.
- Thermo Fisher Scientific (Analytical Instruments segment)
Revenue: $5.339 billion in Q1-Q3 2025; $7.463 billion in 2024
Thermo Fisher Scientific, in June, unveiled two next-generation mass spectrometers. The company launched its Thermo Scientific™-branded Orbitrap™ Astral™ Zoom and Orbitrap™ Excedion™ Pro, both designed to uncover complex biological processes that could lead to advancements in precision medicine and significant insights for complex diseases. Orbital Astral Zoom is designed to enable 35% faster scan speeds, 40% higher throughput, and 50% expanded multiplexing capabilities over the last-generation Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Astral mass spectrometer. According to the company, Orbitrap Excedion Pro is the first platform to combine next-gen Orbitrap hybrid mass spectrometry with alternative fragmentation technologies intended for efficiently analyzing complex biomolecules. In October, Thermo Fisher introduced the Thermo Scientific™ Orbitrap Exploris™ EFOX Mass Detector, a first-of-its-kind high-resolution accurate mass (HRAM) Orbitrap system designed specifically for environmental and food safety laboratories.
- Danaher (Life Sciences segment)
Revenue: $5.249 billion in Q1-Q3 2025; $7.329 billion in 2024
Danaher primarily develops and markets mass spec systems through SCIEX, which in November announced that it sold a ZenoTOF 8600 mass spectrometer to Veloxity Labs, the first bioanalytical contract research organization to buy the system. Installation and qualification of the ZenoTOF 8600 was expected to start in January 2026. ZenoTOF attracted a notable academic customer in June when South Korea’s Chungnam National University signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with SCIEX, committing the school to incorporate into its education and research programs the company’s mass spec technologies—part of Chungnam’s “Industry on Campus” vision designed to lower barriers between academia and industry.
- Agilent (Life Sciences and Diagnostic Markets segment plus Applied Markets segment)
Revenue: $4.04 billion in year ending October 31, 2025; $3.763 in year ending October 31, 2024. 1
Agilent in May launched a partnership with Ubix Therapeutics, combining its liquid chromatography/mass spec (LC/MS) systems and other analytical tools with Ubix’s Degraducer platform, a cancer research collaboration designed to accelerate the development and optimization of targeted protein degradation (TPD) and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for cancer therapy. “A central objective is to advance precision oncology by enabling the targeting of previously undruggable proteins through the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway, or UPP, ultimately leading to safer and more effective therapies,” You Jae Soo, Agilent Korea general manager and associate vice president of sales, told GEN last summer. In June, Agilent introduced the InfinityLab Pro iQ Series, a next-generation LC-mass detection instrument designed for analyzing essential molecules such as therapeutic small molecules, oligonucleotides, peptides, and proteins.
- Waters (Waters™ segment)
Revenue: $1.99 billion in Q1-Q3 2025; $2.604 billion in 2024
Waters will likely rank higher next year upon completing its $17.5 billion combination with the Biosciences & Diagnostic Solutions business of BD (Becton, Dickinson & Co.), expected to close in Q1. The deal aims to create a life-sci tools powerhouse projected to generate $6.5 billion in combined pro forma revenues during 2025. In October, Waters unveiled its Waters Xevo Charge Detection Mass Spectrometer (CDMS), offering direct, individual-particle mass measurement for molecules up to 150+ MDa, enabling what the company called previously unattainable analysis of protein complexes, nucleic acids, lipid nanoparticles, viral vectors, and more. In June, Waters launched the Xevo™ TQ Absolute XR Mass Spectrometer, designed to use up to 50% less power and nitrogen gas, and produce 50% less heat than any other marketed high-performing tandem or triple quadrupole.
- Shimadzu (Analytical and Measuring Instruments segment)
Revenue: ¥168.132 billion ($1.072 billion) in six months ending September 30, 2025; ¥347.915 billion ($2.219 billion) in Fiscal Year 2024 (12 months ending March 31, 2025).
Shimadzu rang out 2025 by agreeing in December to acquire Czech-based Tescan Group from global investment firm Carlyle, a deal intended to complement the buyer’s holdings in mass spec and analytical instruments, while expanding into electron microscopy. Carlyle, on January 5, confirmed the deal price of $850 million. Shimadzu justified the deal in part by comparing the 5.4% CAGR of electron microscopy projected between 2024-29 to the 4.1% CAGR of mass spec. Shimadzu’s mass spec offerings include single quadrupole tools (LCMS-2020, LCMS-2050) for routine analysis, triple quadrupole tools (RX series, 8060NX) for high-sensitivity quantification, and Q-TOF (9030, IM Scope QT) tools for high-resolution imaging and biopharma characterization, integrated with liquid chromatography systems for compound identification, quantification, and imaging.
- Hitachi High-Tech (Healthcare Solutions segment)
Revenue: ¥142.15 billion ($906.7 million) in six months ending September 30, 2025; ¥276.9 billion ($1.766 billion) in fiscal year 2024 (12 months ending March 31, 2025) 2
Hitachi High-Tech, in July, completed construction of the 16,000-square-meter (172,222-square-foot) Tarazaki Site, a factory in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki, Japan, with the aim of accelerating its manufacturing of products used in healthcare. Hitachi’s expertise in hardware engineering and integrating diagnostic instruments for clinical settings has helped power a nearly 50-year partnership with Roche, a partnership the companies renewed in 2024. Hitachi and Roche committed themselves to “at least 10 years of additional collaboration,” with a focus on integrating clinical mass spec into routine lab work through the companies’ cobas® Mass Spec solution, which combines mass spec technology with existing cobas analyzers. Following a reorganization in 2025, Hitachi began reporting Hitachi High-Tech revenues under the heading “Measurement & Analysis Systems (Hitachi High-Tech).
- Revvity (Life Sciences segment)
Revenue: $1.049 billion in Q1-Q3 2025; $1.254 billion in 2024
Revvity applies mass spec-based technologies through its QSight® diagnostic instruments (launched in 2016 by PerkinElmer, which rebranded its Life Sciences and Diagnostics business as Revvity in 2023) and NeoBase™ reagent kits. In 2023, Revvity agreed to combine its NeoBase™ 2 and NeoLSD™ reagents with the mass spec tools of Danaher-owned SCIEX through a collaboration intended to advance mass spectrometry solutions in Revvity’s newborn screening products, enabling labs to identify newborns with rare disorders. Beyond mass spec, Revvity in November announced it agreed to acquire scientific software solutions developer ACD/Labs for an undisclosed price, a deal designed to help the buyer provide comprehensive support from discovery and development to scale-up and manufacturing by further supporting analytical characterization and molecular design across pharma and material sciences.
- MKS (Specialty Industrial end market) 3
Revenue: $828 million in Q1-Q3 2025; $1.166 billion in 2024
MKS dropped the word “Instruments” from its name in May 2025, reflecting its expansion beyond industrial instruments to new markets through both organic growth and acquisitions. The company says its mass spec-based solutions are designed to deliver high levels of understanding and control in vacuum and gas-related applications that include pharmaceutical lyophilization for in-situ gas monitoring. During Q3 2025, MKS voluntarily prepaid $100 million in debt and generated $988 million in net revenue, the top of its guidance to investors, results that have helped its stock price zoom 62% in the year ending January 6, from $114.59 to $183.50.
- BD (Becton, Dickinson and Co.) (Diagnostic Solutions business)
Revenue: $1.838 billion in Fiscal Year 2025 (12 months ending September 30, 2025); $1.846 billion in FY 2024
BD remains on this list pending completion of the $17.5 billion combination with Waters announced last July and expected to occur in Q1. BD generated nearly $3.4 billion last year from its biosciences and diagnostics operations, which the company decided to sell or spin off in February 2025 in order to focus more closely on its core medical technology business. BD partners with Bruker to market the BD™ Bruker MALDI Biotyper® CA System, designed to measure an organism’s unique proteomic fingerprint using MALDI-TOF (Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-of-Flight) mass spectrometry. In December, BD agreed to combine its BD® HD Check System with ChemoGlo’s liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis in a collaboration designed to advance hazardous drug contamination testing in health care settings.
- Bruker (Bruker Scientific Instruments [BSI] Chemicals, Applied Markets, Life Science, In Vitro Diagnostics, Detection [CALID] segment)
Revenue: $878.6 million in Q1-Q3 2025; $1.094 billion in 2024
During its third-quarter 2025 presentation in November, Bruker President and CEO Frank H. Laukien, PhD, told investors the company “is seeing early traction” for recently launched life science mass spec products: “Our molecular spectroscopy revenues remained stable, but with strong applied markets orders.” Bruker last year launched its timsOmni™ (tims is short for trapped ion mobility separation) and timsMetabo™ mass spectrometers. timsOmini is a timsTOF (time of flight)-based mass spectrometer promising users the flexibility of a Swiss Army Knife in enabling functional proteoform sequencing as well as identifying and localizing post-translational modifications with unprecedented depth and speed. timsMetabo—positioned as offering 4D-metabolomics and 4D-lipidomics sensitivity, specificity, and annotation confidence—is designed to enable the generation of a ‘digital metabolome archive’ for every sample.
References
- Figure for year ending October 31, 2025 combines $2.726 billion (Life Sciences and Diagnostic Markets) and $1.314 billion (Applied Markets). Figure for year ending October 31, 2024, combines $2.466 billion (Life Sciences and Diagnostic Markets) and $1.297 billion (Applied Markets).
- The six-month FY 2025 figure represents 37% of the revenue listed under that heading, since the company disclosed a Healthcare Solutions revenue figure that it said constituted 37% of High-Tech’s revenues for FY 2024, the 12 months ending March 31, 2025.
- Specialty Industrial is one of MKS’ three “end market” segments and includes the life and health sciences market as well as research, industrial, and defense markets.
