The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2008
🌱
2008
Founded by MIT scientists
Jason Kelly and co-founders, including synthetic-biology pioneer Tom Knight, set out to make organisms programmable.
Wikipedia
2017
🦄
2017
Joins the unicorn club
Funding values the 'organism foundry' above $1B.
TechCrunch
Sep 2021
📈
Sep 2021
The peak: public at ~$15B$15B
The Soaring Eagle SPAC merger — announced at $17.5B — lands Ginkgo on the NYSE under the ticker DNA at a ~$15B implied valuation.
SEC filing
Oct 2021
Oct 2021
A short-seller attacks
A scathing short report goes after Ginkgo's accounting; the stock never regains its highs.
Bloomberg
2022–23
2022–23
Big losses, small revenue
Revenue stays tiny against the enormous valuation while losses pile up, and the stock grinds lower.
Macrotrends
2023
💔
2023
Slips out of the club
The de-SPAC unwind drags Ginkgo's market value below $1B.
Macrotrends
2022–24
💬
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–24
Glassdoor reviews from the slide described brilliant scientists and an inspiring mission undercut by young, inexperienced leadership that kept pivoting strategy; employees recounted the 2024 restructuring that cut about a quarter of staff and trimmed benefits, leaving those who stayed stretched thin.
Aug 2024
Aug 2024
A 1-for-40 reverse split
The share consolidation keeps the listing alive; market value settles around $0.6B, some 96% below the peak.
SEC filing
Today
Today
Still in the club — and still trading
Live · DNA · NYSEas of 2026-09-17
$7.84▲ 15.63% today≈ $528M cap · −96.5% from peak
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
Ginkgo Bioworks pitched itself as a 'cell programming' platform — an organism foundry engineering microbes for industry — and went public in September 2021 via a Soaring Eagle SPAC merger at a ~$15B implied valuation.
Revenue stayed small against its enormous valuation and losses, a short-seller attacked its accounting, and the stock collapsed; by 2024 Ginkgo ran a 1-for-40 reverse split to stay listed, its market value down ~96% to about $0.6B.
Source: SEC / Macrotrends / GenomeWeb (~$15B implied valuation via Soaring Eagle SPAC Sept 2021, $17.5B announced; ATH $596.80 Nov 2021; 1-for-40 reverse split Aug 2024; ~$581M market cap June 2026)
