What Does Ginkgo Bioworks Do?

Ginkgo Parnters with Agricen

"Ginkgo's unique approach to process development and optimization brought an efficiency for developing a custom fermentation process that we didn't see with other toll producers. This is work that we would typically do in-house, but we are always looking for ways to be more operationally efficient. We saw what Ginkgo's team offered and enlisted them to do what they are experts at – simplifying processes with challenging microbes. "

Ginkgo Parnters with Carnegie-Mellon University 

Combining recent advancements in synthetic biology with cutting-edge detection technology, the team expects to develop both a highly innovative orally administered pill containing specially engineered, tumor-targeting sensors and a user-friendly cancer screening device designed for at-home testing. As part of this team, Ginkgo plans to apply its cell and enzyme engineering expertise to support development of these new diagnostic tools.

Ginkgo Bioworks partners on Deep Origin-led team to develop new tools for predicting drug safety  

The collaboration, Pharmacological Research and Evaluation through Digital Integration and Clinical Trial Simulation (PREDICTS), aims to develop a revolutionary computational platform for drug safety.

As part of this team, Ginkgo will be leveraging its 'Datapoints' platform for perturbation response profiling to generate high-quality, high-throughput, structured data sets to support AI model training, including small molecule drug and genetic perturbations spanning multiple cell and tissue types. Readouts will include cell type-specific toxicity endpoints, DRUG-seq transcriptomics, and cell painting.

Ginkgo Bioworks Selected by PNNL to Deliver a Modular, High‑Throughput Phenotyping Platform for DOE's M2PC

Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA) today announced it has been awarded by the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) a four-year, up to $47M contract to co-design, build, and integrate a High‑Throughput Automated Phenotyping Platform (HTP‑APP) in support of the Microbial Molecular Phenotyping Capability (M2PC). The platform, selected through a competitive procurement process, is intended to enable the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research program to generate rich, reproducible microbial and microbiome data that ensure the U.S. remains at the forefront of the bioeconomy, safeguarding economic, societal, and national security benefits while maintaining global leadership in biotechnology innovation. Drawing on Ginkgo Automation's dynamic Catalyst scheduling software and modular Reconfigurable Automation Carts (RACs), the HTP‑APP is designed to automate end‑to‑end workflows—from media and cultivation to sample preparation and multimodal analytics—while supporting BSL‑2 operations, remote planning and execution, and laboratory integration. This modular approach is expected to help PNNL adapt the platform as scientific needs evolve, add new methods or instrumentation, and maintain high uptime in a user‑facility environment. 

Ginkgo Bioworks Awarded Project Agreement through BARDA's BioMaP-Consortium

BOSTON, Nov. 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA) announced today that it has been awarded a contract through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority's (BARDA) Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Preparedness Consortium (BioMaP-Consortium) to develop innovations that strengthen and reduce the costs of domestic biomanufacturing of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to protect against and treat infection by filoviruses such as Ebola (EBOV) and Sudan Viruses (SUDV). Ginkgo will lead a team composed of Advanced BioScience Laboratories (ABL), Inc., Isolere Bio by Donaldson, NeuImmune, Inc., and ProteoNic BV to develop and integrate innovative technologies that will span the entire process for producing mAb drugs.

To sum up these projects and figure out what Ginkgo does, let's look at the italicized highlights of Ginkgos roles?

Agricen: Ginkgo specialized in process development and optimization of a custom fermentation process. 

Carnegie-Mellon: Ginkgo specializes in cell and enzyme engineering.

Deep Origen:  Ginkgo specializes in generating data sets to support AI model training.

PNNL:  Ginkgo specializes in software that automates work flow in a manufacturing setting. 

BARDA:  Ginkgo specializes in Antibody production.

I worked for a company that had similar needs for help in manufacturing the antibody they were selling. The company began with two groups, Fermentation and Protein Sciences, their official designation. What they really needed was Upstream and Downstream production teams. The leadership simply did not know that such terms existed and were what they needed. Eventually Upstream and Downstream groups were hired and... they failed. The company had no choice but to pay the maximum required to get the work done properly by hiring one of the many manufacturing companies available in the biotechnology space. 

Long before Ginkgo came into existence, manufacturing companies had been working and advancing the science and technology of biopharmaceutical manufacturing. Ginkgo is one of the least experienced options in this space. 

Optimizing cell and enzyme engineering? Generating data sets for AI? Workflow software?

Perhaps Ginkgo has overextended it's "expertise" as a result of a CEO and board lacking in the proper background in industry. The leadership of Ginkgo suffers from what many in biotech cargo cults suffer. They moved straight from the University to industry, not learning what is already known from people who have learned from doing the work. Ginkgo specializes in stringing together a set of words that fool the cargo cult tribesmen into thinking work will be done to bring the big metal birds from the sky. They are competing in a field full of companies who have, for decades, been doing what they claim to do. 

It reminds one of the downfall of Theranos. Theranos claimed to have tests for 272 (?) tests done by your local hospital. Once they were up and running Theranos ended up using the technology of many of their competitors claiming the results were generated by their little toaster machine and the microblood draw device. The real experts were out there, asking tough question of Elizabeth Holmes at the conferences. These experts worked on the same problems. They had a very hard time solving problems that Theranos claimed to have solved, with no publications. 

In essence Theranos and Ginkgo are the industries version of the lab tech postdoc who becomes known as the Golden Child. The one guy in the lab who gets the results the PI wants, every time. He or she gets the big projects because the PI wants particular results, not the kind that come from honest work presented in an honest way. 

And so it behooves me to tell you what is missing...

Ginkgo has announced more partnerships than anyone can remember. What have the conclusions been? How many times have they accomplished the goal? How many press releases are about collaborations beginning rather than successful endings? If you were to ask Jason Kelly what has been Ginkgos biggest success story, what would he say? What about the top ten? What has been the cargo? How many airplanes have landed on their runway and what came out of the back of the big metal birds? 

Ginkgo Bioworks Might Not Fail, Probably Will

On May 13, 2024 Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings Inc. announced that it received a notice on May 7 from the NYSE informing the company that is is not in compliance with Section 802.01C. The commons stock was under $1 per share over a consecutive 30 trading-day period. Ginkgo has 6 months to regain compliance.

The company has been in existence since 2008. It's IPO was in 2001. They entered the market through a merger with SPAC Soaring Eagle at a $17.5B valuation. They currently have a market cap of $0.94B. The CEO and co-founder, Jason Kelly has been the only CEO (16.3 years) at Ginkgo. He is asking for a raise.

The solution to the problems of the Biotechnology industry, as well as the recent debates of the Covid virus origination is the empowered laboratory work force. The people at the highest positions think they can bully underlings around like Steve Jobs at Apple. The problem is that Steve Jobs was bullying some very smart and useful people around. Biotech and the life sciences leaders have spent their time diminishing the significance of the work done by their subordinates. As a result they were all left with nothing but the narrative they started with. No scientific backing to prop up and/or propel the big ideas. We end up with pandemics they didn't see coming and $15B corporate failures. And it happens fast. 

If there were an empowered laboratory workforce, it might just work as Ginkgo claims their labs work. From a business perspective you want the projects to all work out. Need a protein? Here you go. Need a test? Here you go. The problem is spelled out in the Cargo Cult Science speech. It's not a question of how to arrange things differently, like the coconut headsets. There is a fundamental misunderstanding. 

Theoretically Ginkgo would be the empowered laboratory workforce. Someone with power applies skepticism to the claims of those in their group. They send the research out for testing. The testing is done in the empowered laboratory by skilled life long professionals. What Ginkgo does however is not at the skeptical level. They allow for the claims of magical molecules, develop the molecules and they hand them back to the people who thought them up. The original thinkers and Ginkgo have both avoided the empowered laboratory work force. No one has applied the scientific method described in the CCS to put the idea through the black box. Idea in, reality out. 

Half of the NIH $39B budget should go towards laboratories that test the work done by the grantees who receive the other half of the budget. 

Just as we saw with the e-mail between Collins and Fauci, forcing desired outcomes is how science is conducted at the highest levels. "This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists who met with the Secretary seems to be getting a lot of attention-and even a signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises. I don't see anything like that on line yet. Is it on it underway?" - Francis Collins to Anthony Fauci

The empowered laboratory workforce would be interested in the database at the Wuhan lab. It would be easy to discover if they had anything to do with Sars-Cov2 if they had laboratory evidence. Collins and Fauci would not know how to find it. They wouldn't know what to look for. Instead they wield the kind of power that says, "write a paper and have it published in a major journal that disputes the ideas we can not abide". How does a scientist dispute ideas that may be true? Step one: Avoid the evidence!

Ginkgo has a similar scientific method. A company comes to them needing one of the many services. Let's say they want a protein made and manufactured to be sold as a drug delivery product. The company tells Ginkgo what the protein will do once it is made. Ginkgo makes the protein. They hand it back. The company now has to prove that the protein does what they said it will do. Sars Cov2 did not come from a lab in Wuhan and this new protein will deliver drugs to specific cells. If anyone says otherwise, take them down in the journals. 

What then is Ginkgos role in the success of their business partner? None. They take the money if the company succeeds at getting their desired outcome.

The desired outcome is not the actual outcome most of the time. The truth (reality) is tough. If you make widgets on an assembly line your job is well defined. If you make antibodies that bind to specific proteins you are making widgets. The complicated nature of the work is higher than that of the assembly line worker. The difference is akin to a person who makes cakes versus someone who makes rocket engines. If your job is to convince others that the widgets cure cancer, you are not making widgets. You work in advertising. You sell your companies product. You sell whatever they tell you to sell. The highest ranking officials tell you what the desired product will do. Everybody else lives and dies on whether or not the desired product does what it is supposed to do. 

Will Ginkgo Bioworks fail? It's not up to them. It depends on chance. Luck. Will their business model allow them to land that one product that will make them the kind of money they have structured into their payoff system? It's not up to them. They are on a fishing expedition.