It’s an exciting time in AI, Life Sciences, and Robotics. Big hat tip to Ginkgo Bioworks and their launch of Ginkgo Cloud Lab this week!
Michelle Li saw some of their roadmap in action at SLAS (Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening) 2026 and spoke with Alexander Smith at Ginkgo to hear more about what they’re building..
🛠️ Ginkgo is becoming a tools & infrastructure platform that helps other biotech companies run experiments at scale
🔬 Their “Racks” system flips traditional lab automation on its head. Instead of one giant robotic workcell built for a single workflow, Ginkgo built modular “Reconfigurable Automation Carts” that each perform a unit operation and can be recombined into new workflows.
🚄 🚗 The design philosophy is like a “subway vs. car. Traditional workflows are like subways (high throughput but fixed routes). Individual instruments are like cars (flexible but slow). Ginkgo’s system aims to combine both: flexibility & high throughput.
📈 The platform can run massive parallel experimentation. On a typical day the system may run ~75 different scientific protocols simultaneously for different researchers
🤯 Closed-loop AI is already driving real lab improvements. In one experiment, an AI system read scientific literature, designed experiments, ran them through the automation system, and iterated on results improving protein production costs by 30–40% vs. state-of-the-art
More from Michelle Li & MGMT Boston on the way!