We are both sort of right. Here's what they said: Ginkgo Bioworks will offer to program cells for YC companies doing qualifying synthetic biology projects on a

We are both sort of right. Here's what they said: Ginkgo Bioworks will offer to program cells for YC companies doing qualifying synthetic biology projects on a $0 down basis. Instead of charging, Ginkgo will get equity. Their equity ownership will be based on achieving technical milestones, so it’s essentially a risk free deal for the companies. Ginkgo will effectively be making a big in-kind R&D investment in these companies. Before engaging with YC companies, Ginkgo will need to vet the projects for technical feasibility and IP conflicts. But a broad range of projects will qualify, and I expect that the right companies can save years and millions of dollars by taking advantage of this deal. This hints at consulting for product development, but specifically avoids talking about it as a butts-in-seats service (revenue scales linearly with people-hours cost). The surrounding wording is similar: Ginkgo’s new deal will make it possible for startups to access the same platform. Ginkgo providing startups access to their platform is a big step in the shift that we see towards the AWSification of biology. That's the opposite of a butts-in-seats framing, but the product development work at the moment decidedly is a butts-in-seats problem. To be clear I am hugely hopeful that someone figures this out, because that's a trillion dollar problem.