The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory granted Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings (NYSE:DNA) a contract worth up to $47 million, which caused the company’s shares to rise 4.5% in premarket trade on Friday.
In order to support the Department of Energy’s Microbial Molecular Phenotyping Capability, the four-year contract entails co-designing, constructing, and integrating a High-Throughput Automated Phenotyping Platform. Ginkgo used a competitive procurement approach to win the contract.
The platform will automate processes from sample analysis to media preparation using modular Reconfigurable Automation Carts and Catalyst scheduling software from Ginkgo Automation. The system’s goal is to enable PNNL to maintain high operational uptime while adapting to changing research demands.
“Our team is pleased to contract and cooperate with PNNL again to establish a new capability we think will improve access to high-quality biological phenotyping at scale,” Ginkgo Automation General Manager Will Serber said.
The platform intends to gather multimodal analytical measures appropriate for AI/ML, improve the productivity and repeatability of phenotyping campaigns across a variety of microorganisms, and provide the groundwork for future equipment at PNNL’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory.
The effort is in line with President Trump’s recent AI Action Plan, which called for investment in AI-enabled cloud labs to boost U.S. scientific innovation, according to Jason Kelly, CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks.
