Building a Company in Boston Around Biotechnology

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Ginko CEO: "When you are working with as fundamental a technology as biology, it really requires a lot of care" He says Ginkgo's mission is to make biology easier to engineer. But if you're going to open up the application space, he says, think about who stands to benefit and who doesn't. 'We don't pretend to have all the answers'

Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine would not have scaled without Ginkgo Bioworks. Reshma Shetty, co-founder and COO of Ginkgo – slated to go public via SPAC acquisition at a reported $15 billion valuation – explains how biotech innovation can build a better future now. Ginkgo's platform already serves industries from food and agriculture, to materials, to healthcare. Shetty acknowledges that engineering genes is a high stakes pursuit, and says Ginkgo is trying to pair the ambition of Silicon Valley with a "higher level of care" than consumer tech companies like social media have demonstrated. The key, Shetty says, is creating an unstable equilibrium – propelling progress but not at the expense of principles.

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