Ginkgo Bioworks secured a four‑year, $47 million contract to design and build an automated phenotyping platform for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and its Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. The system will automate cultivation, sample prep, and analytics (imaging, flow cytometry, mass spectrometry) to generate standardized datasets for AI and machine‑learning training. The work supports DOE microbial and microbiome research and extends Ginkgo’s commercial automation business—technology the company initially built for internal programs—into federally funded research infrastructure and high‑throughput phenomics services.