Founded in 2008, Ginkgo Bioworks’ stock jumped almost 25% on August 29, hitting $2.22, after unveiling a five-year partnership with Google Cloud. The partnership centers around the development of novel AI tools for biology and biosecurity. In particular, Ginkgo hopes to further its mission to make biology easier to engineer in the AI era. Opting…
Cellares teams up with Bristol Myers Squibb to explore automated CAR-T cell therapy manufacturing
Less than a week after announcing that it has secured $255 million in Series C funding, South San Francisco-based startup Cellares has revealed that Bristol Myers Squibb has joined its Technology Adoption Partnership (TAP) program. To date, the company has raised more than $355 million in total financing. As part of the TAP program, Bristol…
Nvidia exec: Generative AI can turn every biologist into a computer scientist — and vice versa
On a recent visit to Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, I had the chance to speak with Kimberly Powell, the company’s vice president and general manager of healthcare. After asking about the pharma industry’s surging interest in AI, Powell remarked, “Every pharma knows who Nvidia is now.” Curious, I asked her, “How long has that…
Raising the efficiency floor and innovation ceiling with generative AI in drug discovery
Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT promise advances that extend beyond capturing public interest. Because transformer models like GPT have an architecture that supports the understanding of language in context, they point to an array of novel possibilities for scientific research. “The transformer architecture is critical,” according to Michael Connell, the chief operating officer…
A deep dive into AWS’s strategy with generative AI and ML in life sciences
The AI market is witnessing meteoric growth, with projections hinting at a potentially staggering increase over the next decade. Against this backdrop of rapid AI evolution, we recently spoke with Tehsin Syed, general manager of AWS Health. Syed shared that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is seeing growing interest from Big Pharma firms. “Nine of the…
SandboxAQ, bearing Alphabet’s DNA, eyes quantum-inspired breakthroughs in drug discovery
Emerging as a spinoff from Alphabet’s experimental division X, SandboxAQ recently pulled back the curtain on its latest endeavor — the biopharma molecular simulation division AQBioSim. The venture has attracted investments from significant figures like former Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt, who is now the chair of Sandbox AQ, and Salesforce.com Inc. founder Marc Benioff’s Time…