Ginkgo Restores Sequential Revenue Growth After a Sharp Drop

The Tip Desk · November 11, 2026 · 3 min read

Third-quarter revenue was $28 million, up from $20 million in the second quarter, as the company posted a $41 million GAAP net loss from continuing operations.

Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings (DNA), the synthetic-biology company selling autonomous laboratory systems and Cloud Lab services, reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $28 million, down 6% from $29 million a year earlier after a 48% year-over-year decline in the second quarter.

The sequential recovery was the quarter’s defining turn. Revenue had fallen to $20 million in the second quarter of 2026, a period the company attributed primarily to ongoing program rationalization as part of restructuring. In the third quarter, sales rose from that $20 million level.

GAAP net loss from continuing operations narrowed to $41 million from $73 million a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA improved to a $22 million loss from a $53 million loss in the year-ago quarter. Loss from operations was $43.6 million, versus $82.3 million a year earlier.

Research and development expense was $40.9 million in the three months ended September 30, 2026, versus $69.4 million a year earlier. General and administrative expense was $28.6 million, versus $37.0 million. Cost of other revenue was $1.8 million. Carrying cost of excess space, net of sublease income, was $14.0 million.

Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were $285 million as of September 30, 2026, down from $302 million at June 30. Third-quarter cash burn was $27 million. The company reaffirmed expected total cash burn of $150 million to $125 million for full-year 2026.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Jason Kelly said Ginkgo now has two core offerings built on one autonomous lab platform: Autonomous Labs equipment and Cloud Lab services. The company said it sells RAC and Catalyst systems to pharma, national labs, universities and the U.S. government, and runs experiments in Nebula, which it described as the world’s largest autonomous lab with more than 100 reconfigurable automation carts.

The quarter’s commercial announcements centered on those two lines. Ginkgo said it announced the sale of an autonomous lab to Novo at Novo’s Waltham, Massachusetts R&D site. It also cited an ARPA-H GIVE subcontract worth up to $17.5 million to put RACs and Catalyst into RNA-medicine manufacturing. The company said those wins followed previously announced commissions at Caltech, the University of Maryland and Northwestern under the NSF’s Programmable Cloud Laboratories Test Bed, and MIT Media Lab’s construction of a RAC-based cloud lab.

On Cloud Lab, Ginkgo said 22 ADME customers signed in the third quarter, of which 20 were first-time Ginkgo customers. It said Takeda, Argenx, Lundbeck and AbbVie founded an Antibody Developability Consortium, and that GSK, Novartis and Biogen signed new work. The company said frontier AI labs such as OpenAI are using the Cloud Lab for AI data generation.

The company said the U.S. government is making autonomous labs national infrastructure through the Genesis Mission, the NSF’s approximately $400 million PCL Test Bed, and the $1.5 billion X-Labs initiative, where Ginkgo is providing access to Nebula, as announced by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on October 8.

Ginkgo remains a single reportable segment, Cell Engineering, which recorded the $28 million of revenue. Weighted average common shares outstanding were 63.97 million in the three months ended September 30, 2026. Net loss per share from continuing operations was $0.64.

The company said it will host a videoconference on November 5 to discuss the quarter and outlook. Full-year cash-burn guidance of $150 million to $125 million was left unchanged from the second-quarter update.