Ginkgo Bioworks, Google Cloud announce five-year AI partnership

Ginkgo Bioworks (DNA) and Google Cloud (GOOG, GOOGL) announced a five-year strategic cloud and AI partnership, intended to enable Ginkgo to develop and deploy AI tools for biology and biosecurity. Under the strategic partnership, Ginkgo will work to develop new, state-of-the-art large language models running on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform across genomics, protein function, and synthetic biology, helping Ginkgo’s customers accelerate innovation and discovery in fields as diverse as drug discovery, agriculture, industrial manufacturing, and biosecurity. Ginkgo intends to make Google Cloud its primary cloud services provider, significantly increasing its next-generation cloud computing resources, positioning Ginkgo and its customers well as the need for cloud computing expands. In addition, Google Cloud will provide funding to help Ginkgo achieve certain milestones over the next three years. The commitment underscores Google Cloud’s support in advancing foundation models in the life sciences sector and selection of Ginkgo as its key partner in the development of this ecosystem.