US-based biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks has entered into a five-year strategic cloud and AI partnership with Google Cloud to develop and deploy AI tools for biology and biosecurity.
Under the partnership, Ginkgo will develop new, advanced large language models (LLMs) on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform across genomics, protein function, and synthetic biology.
The partnership will help Ginkgo’s customers in various fields, including drug discovery, agriculture, industrial manufacturing, and biosecurity.
Ginkgo said that the Vertex AI platform has been selected based on its ability to scale cost-effectively and handle heavy-duty workloads while still understanding nuances in data.
The US biotech company intends to make Google Cloud its primary cloud services provider, significantly enhancing its next-generation cloud computing resources.
Furthermore, Google Cloud will provide funding support to help Ginkgo achieve certain milestones over the next three years.
Ginkgo Bioworks co-founder and CEO Jason Kelly said: “We believe that by partnering with Google Cloud, Ginkgo can supercharge our mission to make biology easier to engineer.
“The most pressing challenges of our generation require biological solutions, and we must figure out how to better leverage our collective capabilities and move faster.
“With Ginkgo’s automated Foundry to generate large-scale biological data, Google Cloud’s computing horsepower, and Google’s AI expertise, I can’t think of a better partner to scale AI solutions in biological engineering.”
In another development, Google Cloud has separately entered into generative AI (GenAI) partnerships with UK-based digital health company Huma Therapeutics, and US-based healthcare facilities operator HCA Healthcare.
Huma will use Google Cloud’s generative AI (GenAI) technology to enhance its regulated disease management platform.
It is also planning to use Google’s GenAI tools to provide healthcare professionals (HCPs) with better insights to optimise care delivery.
HCA Healthcare is expanding its existing partnership with Google Cloud initiated in 2021 to create a secure and dynamic data analytics platform and operational models.
The expanded partnership will use Google Cloud’s GenAI technology to improve workflows on time-consuming tasks, enabling physicians and nurses to enhance focus on patient care.
