93. Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks, on the future of autonomous laboratories

Episode 93. Jason Kelly is the co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks. He has a Ph.D. in Biological Engineering and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. References : OUTLINE: 00:00 – From Jurassic Park Pilled to MIT 03:00 – Founding Ginkgo During the 2008 Crash 07:00 – Tom Knight & Thinking About Biology Like Software 11:00 – Why Biology Lacked Abstraction (Until Now) 16:00 – The Foundry Model: Centralizing Biology 20:00 – The 5 Levels of Lab Automation 23:00 – Automation vs. Autonomy (Subway vs. Waymo) 27:00 – The Technical Bottleneck: Connecting 150+ Machines 34:30 – The Zymergen Acquisition & Strategic Pivot 38:00 – Level 4 & 5 Labs: The Future of Programmable Biology

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93. Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks, on the future of autonomous laboratories is an episode from Once a Scientist by Nick Edwards.

This episode is 42:01 long.

This episode was published on Feb 25, 2026.

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