Ginkgo Bioworks

Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer.

ginkgobioworks.com

HQ: Boston, MA, USA

Healthcare

Company research

Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals

Updated Aug 16, 2026

Overview

Ginkgo Bioworks builds autonomous labs and biological R&D tools/services that help customers engineer biology more like software. In 2024-2026 it has been positioning itself as a tools + CRO-style provider for cell engineering, automation, and data services, with biosecurity spun out into a separate company.

Primary product

Autonomous lab / cell-programming platform, including Ginkgo Automation (RAC systems) and Ginkgo Datapoints (CRO-style services)

Founded

2009

Headquarters

27 Drydock Ave, 8th floor, Boston, MA 02210, United States

Team size

400-500

Work style

Flexible

Industry

Biotechnology Research

Sub-industry

Synthetic biology / cell programming / biological R&D tools and services

Offices

Emeryville, California, United States

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Utrecht, Netherlands

Business model

contract research services

automation equipment sales

software-enabled lab services

partnership / milestone-based programs

licensing / value-share arrangements (historically, and reduced in newer tools focus)

Funding

Stage

public company (IPO via SPAC in 2021)

Total raised

$4.1B

Latest round

Grant · Apr 2024

Grant

Apr 2024 · Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Corporate Round

May 2021

$775M

Series B

Jul 2015 · Viking Global Investors

$53.3M

Series A

Mar 2015

$9M

People & investors

Leadership

Co-founder and CEO

Founder & CTO

Founder

Chief Business Officer

Michael Miille

General Manager, Ag Business Unit

Steven Coen

Chief Accounting Officer

Jose Cortez

VP Software

Founders

Christina Agapakis

Co-founder

Reshma Shetty

Co-founder

Tom Knight

Co-founder and Founder

Investors

Work & culture

Publicly described culture emphasizes building autonomous labs, experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration between software and biology. Public sources also suggest a flexible work environment with some onsite lab work and some remote work for software/support roles.

Work style

Flexible

Compensation

No company-wide salary policy was publicly confirmed in primary sources reviewed. Public job postings and LinkedIn profiles indicate technical roles and some salary data may exist externally, but I did not find a reliable official compensation statement.

Product & market

Pricing

Not publicly standardized; appears to combine project-based contracts, services, equipment sales, and milestone/value-share structures depending on offering.

Differentiators

—world-scale autonomous lab infrastructure
—combination of robotics, software, and biological R&D services
—can support both customer-run and Ginkgo-run lab workflows
—large standardized datasets useful for AI/ML
—broad platform across cell engineering, automation, and data services

Technology

AWS

React

Python

Docker

GitLab

Cypress

GraphQL

PostgreSQL

Snowflake

Datadog

Terraform

Tableau

Salesforce

Workday

HubSpot

Nextflow

LabVantage LIMS

Customers

large biopharma companies

agriculture / ag-biotech partners

government customers

industrial biotech partners

Competitors

Twist Bioscience

Zymergen

Genomatica / Geno

Culture Biosciences

Lab automation and CRO providers

other synthetic biology platform companies

Scale & contact

Estimated revenue

~$150M-$200M annual revenue; SEC/Exa sources show FY2025 total revenue of $170.2M

Estimated monthly visits

69.5K

Traffic estimate as of Jun 2026

Signals & risks

Layoff

Company disclosed reduction in force and cost-cutting actions in 2024, with annualized run-rate cost reductions cited in earnings materials.

Source

Acquisition

Jul 2022

Ginkgo announced acquisition of Zymergen in an all-stock transaction; later filings note integration, impairment, and bankruptcy-related costs tied to Zymergen.

Source

Shutdown

Apr 2026

Ginkgo completed the sale/spinout of its biosecurity business to Perimeter Systems, Inc., a major strategic divestiture.

Source

Other

Jun 2024

Public filings and annual reports describe restructuring charges, goodwill impairment, lease asset impairment, and facility/site consolidation as part of the company’s cost reduction efforts.

Source