Ginkgo Bioworks appoints Brian O’Sullivan as head of commercial

BOSTON - Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE:DNA), a biotechnology company with a market capitalization of $659 million and an impressive gross profit margin of 79%, has appointed Brian O’Sullivan as Head of Commercial for its Ginkgo Automation division, the company announced Tuesday in a press release. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains strong liquidity with a current ratio of 5.41, though it faces near-term profitability challenges.

O’Sullivan joins from HighRes Biosolutions, where he previously led commercial efforts. In his new role at Ginkgo, he will oversee sales, business development, channel partnerships, marketing, and customer success functions.

The appointment comes as Ginkgo Automation expands beyond supporting internal R&D to providing its modular hardware and software solutions to external clients in biopharma, diagnostics, and national laboratories.

Will Serber, General Manager of Ginkgo Automation, cited O’Sullivan’s experience in "developing and executing capex and software solutions" and "executing large automation transactions" as key qualifications for scaling the division globally.

At HighRes, O’Sullivan built the commercial organization, increased annual bookings, established strategic alliances, and led expansion into Europe and Asia Pacific. His previous experience includes commercial leadership roles at Agilent Technologies, Velocity11, and Beckman Coulter.

O’Sullivan holds a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He will be based in Emeryville, California, reporting directly to Serber.

Ginkgo Automation offers modular Reconfigurable Automation Cart (RAC) hardware, Catalyst scheduling software, and remote monitoring services. The business unit has been transitioning from internal support to external client services over the past year.

Ginkgo Bioworks describes itself as building "tools that make biology easier to engineer for everyone" with divisions focused on R&D solutions, laboratory automation, data generation, and biosecurity.

In other recent news, Ginkgo Bioworks reported second-quarter revenue of $50 million, surpassing consensus estimates of $42 million. This achievement was driven by strong cell engineering performance, despite a 12% year-over-year decline and a 48% drop in biosecurity revenue due to international contract delays. TD Cowen raised its price target for Ginkgo Bioworks to $16 from $12, maintaining a Buy rating on the stock. Additionally, Ginkgo Bioworks secured a $4.66 million contract to deliver an automated anaerobic phenotyping platform to the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The system, utilizing Ginkgo’s Reconfigurable Automation Cart technology, aims to enhance laboratory throughput and efficiency.

Furthermore, Ginkgo Bioworks launched a cost-effective ADME profiling service to accelerate small molecule drug discovery. This service leverages the company’s proprietary automation technology to provide competitive pricing and is conducted entirely within the United States. In another development, Ginkgo Bioworks announced a collaboration with Hugging Face to make biological datasets more accessible for machine learning applications. This partnership aims to accelerate drug development by releasing the GDPx and GDPa dataset series, which are expected to significantly boost AI capabilities in the field.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.