Ginkgo Bioworks has launched a new technology network with 25 partners, pledging to improve customers’ research and development outcomes.
The Ginkgo Technology Network promotes more integrated approaches to delivering R&D efficiency in fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), genetic medicines, biologics, and manufacturing.
Gingko, a platform company, said that R&D is being hampered by firms operating in silos.
In a statement, the firm said it planned to “integrate the technological capabilities of its network partners to provide customers with more robust end-to-end solutions to drive successful R&D outcomes.”
“With the Ginkgo Technology Network, our customers don't have to wrestle on their own with the integration of different vendors or, worse, prematurely choose an approach for biological designs or analysis,” said Jason Kelly, Ginkgo’s CEO and co-founder.
Ginkgo Bioworks, which last week announced the acquisition of three startups, said it had been investing in building and integrating horizontal platform technologies to serve diverse customer programs for over 15 years. (1)
“Our customers are creating groundbreaking – and in many cases lifesaving – products, and they deserve the best tools available to drive success in those programs. We're proud to put the full force of our automated Foundry behind the technologies that our network partners are bringing to the table,” Kelly said.
Gingko named the 25 network partners in its statement, and noted that AI would be a core focus as more companies were seeking to leverage new tools in generative AI.
Having an integrated approach to R&D and building robust feedback loops into computational models has become a “critical differentiator” in determining project success, it said.
Gingko claimed that integrating partner models and AI capabilities with its automation stack would help network partners build more robust models that benefit from additional training data and reinforcement learning.
“There are no silver bullets yet in biological design and making progress will require collaboration,” said Anna Marie Wagner, senior vice president, Gingko’s head of AI and head of corporate development.
“It's clear that even the best AI models benefit tremendously from access to relevant labeled data and it's equally clear that experimental designs are dramatically improved with input from AI. I'm grateful to our inaugural network partners for taking this journey with us,” Wagner said.
One of the network partners is synthetic biology company bit.bio, whose ioCells portfolio of precision reprogrammed human cells for research and drug discovery will now be available within Gingko’s platform ecosystem and accessible via the network.
Mark Kotter, bit.bio’s CEO and founder, said it was “exciting” to join the network, which would help customers to increase R&D efficiency.
