Ginkgo Bioworks Sells Autonomous Lab Technology to Novo Nordisk in Hardware Pivot
Ginkgo Bioworks has sold an autonomous laboratory system to Novo Nordisk, marking a shift from selling fermentation services to selling the robotic infrastructure itself.
The system is built around Ginkgo's Reconfigurable Automation Carts, modular robotic units paired with Catalyst software and AI agents capable of drafting experimental protocols and feeding results into successive rounds of experiments.
The deal signals a broader commercialisation strategy for Ginkgo, which is now monetising both its engineered biological strains and the laboratory hardware used to develop them.
From Services to Hardware
Ginkgo Bioworks, the Boston-based synthetic biology company, has completed a sale of its autonomous laboratory system to Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, which will install the equipment at a new research site in Waltham, Massachusetts. The transaction converts what had been a collaborative research relationship, established in 2022 and centred on engineered expression hosts for pharmaceutical manufacturing, into a direct hardware supply arrangement.
The practical significance is straightforward: Ginkgo is no longer only running experiments on behalf of clients. It is now selling the machinery that runs those experiments, placing its robotics and software inside a customer's own facility.
What the System Does
The laboratory is built around Ginkgo's Reconfigurable Automation Carts, known internally as RACs. These are modular units combining robotic arms with sample transport mechanisms, designed so that their physical arrangement can be altered as research programmes evolve. The hardware is paired with Catalyst, Ginkgo's proprietary software layer, which coordinates instruments, logs results, and can connect to AI agents that generate experimental protocols autonomously.
The design philosophy is iterative: each round of experimental results is fed directly into the planning of the next, with software rather than scientists managing the handoff between cycles. According to Ginkgo's co-founder and chief executive Jason Kelly, the intent is for autonomous labs to run experiments continuously, freeing researchers to concentrate on analysis and interpretation rather than execution.
Novo Nordisk's pilot programme with Ginkgo, which concluded in July 2023, focused on engineered expression hosts, the biological systems used to produce proteins at manufacturing scale in the pharmaceutical sector.
The Same Infrastructure Behind Food and Ingredient Work
The technology now sold to Novo Nordisk is the same infrastructure Ginkgo has used to conduct its food and ingredient strain development programmes. Automated parallel screening of large numbers of genetic variants underpins the company's work with several partners in that sector, including Dutch dairy protein producer Vivici, Swiss firm QL AG, Israeli company Imagindairy, Chicago-based Aqua Cultured Foods, and natural colour developer Phytolon.
This context matters because it illustrates the dual-use nature of Ginkgo's platform. The same robotic and software stack that screens microbial strains for pharmaceutical expression hosts is what screens fungal and other biological strains for food ingredient applications, including precision fermentation work relevant to alternative protein and functional ingredient markets.
Strains and Equipment: A Parallel Commercialisation Track
The Novo Nordisk deal follows a separate move in August, when Ginkgo licensed its engineered Aspergillus niger strains to Acies Bio, a Slovenian contract development and manufacturing organisation. That agreement gives European customers access to Ginkgo's fungal host strains alongside scale-up and manufacturing support through a single partner. Selling the autonomous lab to Novo Nordisk extends the same underlying logic: rather than retaining proprietary control of its platform and billing for outputs, Ginkgo is now distributing the platform itself, through licensing on the biological side and outright sale on the hardware side.
Whether this represents a durable revenue model or a response to financial pressure is not addressed in the available sources. What is clear is that Ginkgo is now operating as both a strain developer and a laboratory equipment supplier, two distinct commercial roles that the company appears to be pursuing in parallel.
