Biosphere’s COO Arye Lipman argued that biomanufacturing’s next scaling bottleneck may be sterilization, especially for industrial-scale capacity built around steam-in-place and aseptic infrastructure. In the view presented, steam networks, boiler capacity, and specialized reactor vessels drive cost and slow design, construction, validation, and commissioning. The article contrasts biopharma’s increased use of single-use bioreactors—an approach that can reduce some aseptic complexity—with industrial biotechnology’s thinner margins and higher volumes, which often push producers back toward conventional steam approaches. Biosphere is developing a reactor architecture that uses UV sterilization to reduce reliance on sprawling steam piping. The wider implication is that throughput and cost-per-batch economics may increasingly hinge on sterilization engineering reliability rather than upstream biological advances.