Ginkgo Bioworks website screenshot

Ginkgo Bioworks

Ginkgo Bioworks is a synthetic biology company operating autonomous labs and a horizontal platform for engineering biology. Its public developer surface is the Ginkgo AI Model API (api.ginkgobioworks.ai), which runs inference on public and Ginkgo-proprietary biological foundation models — protein and DNA masked language models and embedding models such as ESM2 (650M/3B), ginkgo-aa0-650M, and ginkgo-maskedlm-3utr-v1. The API is an async, job-polling REST service: callers POST a transform request, receive a job result URL, and poll until the job completes. Authentication is via an x-api-key header, credits and keys are issued from the models portal, and an official Python client (ginkgo-ai-client) is published to PyPI. Ginkgo was surfaced as a Felicis portfolio company and enriched into the API Evangelist network.

Ginkgo Bioworks publishes 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Synthetic Biology, Biotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine-Learning.

Ginkgo Bioworks’ developer surface includes documentation, API reference, getting-started guide, signup flow, authentication, and 11 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub
19.2/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 5/100 agent aware saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0
1 APIs
CompanySynthetic BiologyBiotechnologyArtificial IntelligenceMachine-LearningProtein ModelsBioinformaticsInference API

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0
Composite quality — 19.2/100 · emerging
Contract Quality 0.0 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 10.0 / 20
Access Clarity 1.3 / 20
Operational Transparency 0.3 / 13
Contract Governance 0.0 / 12
Discoverability 7.6 / 10
Agent readiness — 5/100 · agent aware
Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10
Documented Reversibility 0 / 6
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3
A2A Agent Card 0 / 8
Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4
Delegated User Identity 0 / 6
Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5
Registration Without a Human 0 / 6
Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5
Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/ginkgo: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Ginkgo AI Model API

Async, job-polling REST API for running inference on public and Ginkgo-proprietary biological foundation models — protein/DNA masked language modeling and mean-embedding generat...

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Ginkgo Authentication

apiKey · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Ginkgo Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 3

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

DeveloperPortal
DeveloperPortal
 GettingStarted
GettingStarted
 SignUp
SignUp

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation
Documentation
 APIReference
APIReference

Agent Surfaces 2

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

X-MCPServerCandidate
X-MCPServerCandidate
 LLMsTxt
LLMsTxt

Design & Contract 3

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Conventions
Conventions
 ErrorCatalog
ErrorCatalog
 Lifecycle
Lifecycle

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization
GitHubOrganization
 Packages
Packages
 SDKs
SDKs

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Authentication
Authentication
 DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Website
Website

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: ginkgo
name: Ginkgo Bioworks
description: 'Ginkgo Bioworks is a synthetic biology company operating autonomous labs and a horizontal platform for engineering
  biology. Its public developer surface is the Ginkgo AI Model API (api.ginkgobioworks.ai), which runs inference on public
  and Ginkgo-proprietary biological foundation models — protein and DNA masked language models and embedding models such as
  ESM2 (650M/3B), ginkgo-aa0-650M, and ginkgo-maskedlm-3utr-v1. The API is an async, job-polling REST service: callers POST
  a transform request, receive a job result URL, and poll until the job completes. Authentication is via an x-api-key header,
  credits and keys are issued from the models portal, and an official Python client (ginkgo-ai-client) is published to PyPI.
  Ginkgo was surfaced as a Felicis portfolio company and enriched into the API Evangelist network.'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/ginkgo/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- felicis
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source:
  - authentication
  - security
  - url: https://www.ginkgobioworks.com
    status: 301
    note: declared website redirects to https://www.ginkgo.bio/ — a different registrable domain (ginkgobioworks.com -> ginkgo.bio),
      possible rename or acquisition (probed 2026-09-03, roadmap#169)
  generated: '2026-09-03'
  method: derived
image: https://www.ginkgobioworks.com/favicon.ico
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-19'
tags:
- Company
- Synthetic Biology
- Biotechnology
- Artificial Intelligence
- Machine-Learning
- Protein Models
- Bioinformatics
- Inference API
tags_raw:
- Company
- Synthetic Biology
- Biotechnology
- Artificial Intelligence
- Machine Learning
- Protein Models
- Bioinformatics
- Inference API
apis:
- name: Ginkgo AI Model API
  description: Async, job-polling REST API for running inference on public and Ginkgo-proprietary biological foundation models
    — protein/DNA masked language modeling and mean-embedding generation. Authenticated with an x-api-key header; an official
    Python client is published on PyPI.
  humanURL: https://ginkgobioworks.github.io/ginkgo-ai-client/
  baseURL: https://api.ginkgobioworks.ai/v1
  tags:
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - Protein Models
  - Inference API
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://ginkgobioworks.github.io/ginkgo-ai-client/
  - type: Authentication
    url: authentication/ginkgo-authentication.yml
  - type: Conventions
    url: conventions/ginkgo-conventions.yml
  - type: ErrorCatalog
    url: errors/ginkgo-error-codes.yml
  - type: Lifecycle
    url: lifecycle/ginkgo-lifecycle.yml
  - type: X-MCPServerCandidate
    url: mcp/ginkgo-mcp.yml
    note: 'Renamed from MCPServer 2026-09-03 (roadmap#247): the manifest self-describes as status: candidate — a tool list
      derived from the published API contracts, not an existing server. The scorer already read the manifest and reported
      mcp_server correctly; the MCPServer type was crediting the artifact-type surfaces with a server that does not exist.'
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.ginkgobioworks.com
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://ginkgobioworks.github.io/ginkgo-ai-client/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://ginkgobioworks.github.io/ginkgo-ai-client/
- type: APIReference
  url: https://ginkgobioworks.github.io/ginkgo-ai-client/api_reference.html
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://ginkgobioworks.github.io/ginkgo-ai-client/
- type: SignUp
  url: https://models.ginkgobioworks.ai/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/ginkgobioworks
- type: Packages
  url: packages/ginkgo-packages.yml
- type: SDKs
  url: packages/ginkgo-packages.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/ginkgo-authentication.yml
- type: Conventions
  url: conventions/ginkgo-conventions.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
  url: errors/ginkgo-error-codes.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/ginkgo-lifecycle.yml
- type: X-MCPServerCandidate
  url: mcp/ginkgo-mcp.yml
  note: 'Renamed from MCPServer 2026-09-03 (roadmap#247): the manifest self-describes as status: candidate — a tool list derived
    from the published API contracts, not an existing server. The scorer already read the manifest and reported mcp_server
    correctly; the MCPServer type was crediting the artifact-type surfaces with a server that does not exist.'
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/ginkgo-domain-security.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/ginkgo-llms.txt
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-19'
  status: backfilled
  pass: local-v1
  note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence

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