# Ginkgo Bioworks > Ginkgo Bioworks is a synthetic biology company that designs and builds custom microbes for customers across various industries, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and industrial chemicals. The company operates high-throughput automated 'foundries' to program cells as if they were software, utilizing a vast proprietary codebase of biological parts. - URL: https://optimly.ai/brand/ginkgo-bioworks - Slug: ginkgo-bioworks - BAI Score: 88/100 - Archetype: Challenger - Category: Biotechnology - Last Analyzed: April 10, 2026 - Part of: Independent (https://optimly.ai/brand/independent) ## Competitors - Absci (https://optimly.ai/brand/absci) - Zymergen (https://optimly.ai/brand/zymergen-acquired-by-ginkgo) ## Also Referenced By - Genomatica (Geno) (https://optimly.ai/brand/genomatica-geno) - Amyris, Inc. (https://optimly.ai/brand/amyris) ## Buyer Intent Signals Problems: In-house R&D Team: Hiring PhD-level biologists and lab technicians to manually design, build, and test organisms using traditional lab equipment. | Traditional CROs: Outsourcing specific bioengineering tasks to traditional Contract Research Organizations (CROs) that lack high-throughput automation. Solutions: cell programming platform | synthetic biology foundries | organism engineering services | biological codebase providers | generative ai for protein design agents | biosecurity monitoring infrastructure | Off-the-shelf Simulation Software: Attempting to optimize chemical or biological processes using existing simulation software without the specialized organism-design platform.