Ginkgo Bioworks provided a tour of its expansive facility and discussed its unique position as a provider of services that facilitate applications of biotechnology in companies of all sizes across the economy. Familiar with the risks associated with dependencies on international chip fabrication plants, visitors from the United States House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party toured Ginkgo's 300,000+ sq. ft.

facility in action, previewed Ginkgo's new under-construction 250,000+ sq. ft. facility, Biofab1, and discussed implications for economic competition in the multi-trillion dollar bioeconomy.

Similar to how chip manufacturers and cloud computing companies have provided the economies of scale and specialization required to enable the digital economy, Ginkgo's Foundry provides companies with the flexibility and scale required to more readily develop and commercialize bio-based products. Specifically, Ginkgo leverages advanced automation and massive biological datasets to drive down R&D costs, while also aiming to improve the speed of development and probability of success of customer programs. Ginkgo provides R&D services for partners including Pfizer, Merck, and Novo Nordisk in biopharma; Bayer, Syngenta, and Corteva in agriculture; Sumitomo and Solvay in specialty chemicals as well as many others in the food, materials, and personal care sectors. The Foundry and Biofab1 have taken on additional national security relevance in light of new generative AI capabilities.

Generative AI stands to accelerate biotechnology R&D, offering pathways to breakthroughs in biopharma and across the economy. In that context, biological data is of renewed and particular importance. Biofab1 is expected to begin operations early next year and aims to significantly increase Ginkgo's capacity to generate biological data.