Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA) has announced a range of initiatives from its Datapoints offering aimed at accelerating the use of artificial intelligence in biologics drug discovery. This includes a strategic partnership with Apheris to establish the Antibody Developability Consortium, alongside the launch of the AbDev AI Competition. These initiatives are designed to position Ginkgo Datapoints as a frontrunner in developing the necessary data infrastructure and collaborative frameworks to advance antibody AI. As drug developers grapple with escalating costs and extended timelines, AI presents an opportunity to mitigate these challenges. However, its effectiveness is often limited by incomplete or siloed datasets. While historical datasets hold value, the industry now demands higher-quality, purpose-built data to train next-generation models. Ginkgo aims to leverage its advanced lab automation to produce such datasets more efficiently, complementing legacy program data with new, AI-enhancing data. The Antibody Developability Consortium, spearheaded by Ginkgo Datapoints in collaboration with Apheris, seeks to tackle one of the most pressing issues in biologics development: the early prediction and optimization of antibody properties to ensure greater clinical and commercial success later in the process. Ginkgo Datapoints will contribute its AI/ML capabilities and high-throughput experimental resources to create specialized datasets for improved model training, while Apheris will offer a federated computing infrastructure that allows members to collaborate securely on sensitive data while retaining full control over their information. “The future of AI in drug discovery depends on creating environments where companies can collaborate without compromising their most valuable data,” stated Robin Röhm, CEO and cofounder of Apheris. “We are successfully doing this with the AI Structural Biology (AISB) consortium, another cross-industry initiative powered by Apheris, and now with this new consortium with Ginkgo, we’re bringing federated learning directly into antibody R&D, making critical datasets usable in ways that were never before possible.” By merging centralized dataset generation with federated model training, the consortium establishes a novel collaborative framework across the industry. This approach combines high-quality diverse datasets generated by Ginkgo with secure access to distributed partner datasets made possible through Apheris’ technology. The consortium is currently recruiting member companies, with initial datasets and models for various antibody formats anticipated in 2026. In conjunction with this, Ginkgo is also launching the inaugural AbDev AI Competition. This competition aims to evaluate the current state of antibody developability modeling and establish widely accepted performance and evaluation standards. By offering a transparent, structured environment for model testing, the competition will pinpoint strengths within the field and highlight areas where new methods and datasets are critically needed. “One of the biggest barriers in antibody AI has been the lack of large, high-quality datasets on developability. Consortia and competitions like these are a crucial step toward closing that gap—creating the shared data and benchmarks we need to advance predictive models across the field,” commented Peter Tessier, professor of pharmaceutical sciences and chemical engineering at the University of Michigan and paid advisor to Ginkgo Datapoints. The AI competition, hosted on the Hugging Face platform, is set to run until early November, culminating in the announcement of winners who will share up to $60,000 in prize money. These initiatives build upon Ginkgo Datapoints’ recent partnership with Tangible Scientific and Inductive Bio to enhance small molecule drug discovery via AI-driven lab workflows. “We are creating collaborative frameworks and helping to establish the standards that will shape the future of AI for the most important areas of drug development,” remarked John Androsavich, general manager of Ginkgo Datapoints. With antibodies representing a significant therapeutic modality and a multibillion-dollar market, the Antibody Developability Consortium emphasizes Ginkgo’s commitment to scaling its biologics capabilities and providing the data infrastructure necessary to expedite R&D across major drug classes, thereby generating value for partners and the wider ecosystem.