Show Notes
Dr. Jason Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks, joins me to unpack autonomous labs, what they are, why biology’s bench tooling barely moved in 20 years, and why the right analogy isn’t a subway or a car, but a Waymo. Is the biology singularity around the corner?
Kelly traces his path from Jurassic Park–era genetic engineering dreams and failing to clone one gene as a freshman, through Drew Endy’s “DNA is code” vision at MIT, to bootstrapping Ginkgo for four years before becoming Y Combinator’s first biotech. Along the way: cells as atom-movers vs computers as bit-movers, why we’re still the “first batter” mastering biology, GPT-5 designing real wet-lab experiments on Ginkgo’s platform, and why US–China competition makes lab automation a national-security issue, including his work on the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology and Genesis Mission / NSF autonomous-lab builds.
Dr Kelly: https://x.com/jrkelly LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrkelly2 Ginkgo: https://www.ginkgo.bio
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The opinions in this episode are those of the speakers. They do not represent the official views of any college, university, company, or other institution I may work for.
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