Aether Biomachines Expands Board of Directors with Appointment of Ginkgo Bioworks Co-Founder Austin Che

Synthetic biology pioneer joins team developing the next-generation, AI-driven enzyme engineering platform for a post-scarcity world

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Aether Biomachines, a leading enzyme engineering company building a future of abundance, today announced the appointment of Austin Che to its Board of Directors. A world renowned expert in synthetic biology, Che will provide guidance and support to the Aether team as it further develops its Al-driven enzyme engineering platform and brings novel products to market. The company’s platform harnesses the power of enzymes to unlock a new era of materials, therapeutics, and molecular products that will be vital to a post-scarcity world.

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Austin Che (Photo: Business Wire)

As co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks, Che brings over 10 years of experience in biotechnology, genetic engineering, and an executive track record of scaling one of the world’s most respected synthetic biology companies. Founded in 2008 by Che and his colleagues from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Che played a critical role in developing Ginkgo’s platform to program cells as easily as computers across a wide variety of applications including food, agriculture, industrial chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. Che helped take Ginkgo Bioworks public in 2021 in a deal worth $15B and the company continues to produce custom organisms for a wide range of industries. Che holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Psychology from Stanford University.

“Building a future of abundance will require a paradigm shift in how we redefine enzyme engineering as a search and optimization problem, assemble new molecular products from basic building blocks, as well as disassemble toxic pollutants in our environment,” said Pavle Jeremic, Founder and CEO of Aether Biomachines. “Austin brings a skillset and perspective that will help us realize that vision. We are thrilled to have him join our Board of Directors and help us expand the Aether enzyme engineering platform to drive the next industrial revolution and help our society to thrive in a post-scarcity future.”

With artificial intelligence at the core of its technology, Aether is building the world’s highest throughput robotic factory and proprietary processes and hardware to generate datasets of unprecedented size and complexity. The company’s multidimensional platform solves the “scalability” issues that currently bottlenecks the industry and pushes the boundaries of what is possible with hardware, process, and algorithmic innovation. This holistic approach allows Aether to unlock novel chemistry that is impossible today and design new products and applications.

“Aether’s integrated technologies for intelligently searching and engineering enzyme sequences has enormous potential,” said Austin Che. “I look forward to working with Aether’s talented leadership team to further develop these innovative approaches and push the boundaries of what is possible with enzyme engineering and biotechnology.”

Che joins Aether’s Board of Directors with Shlomo Yanai, former CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals, Stuart Peterson, Managing Partner of Founder of ARTIS Ventures, Vasudev Bailey, Senior Partner at ARTIS Ventures, and Pavle Jeremic, Aether’s CEO and Founder as well as Commercial Advisory Board members Thomas Ebeling, former CEO of Novartis, and Chris Varma, Founder and CEO of Frontier Medicines.

About Aether Biomachines

Aether is a leading enzyme engineering company building a future of abundance for humankind in a post-scarcity future. The company is catalyzing the next industrial revolution by building the world’s highest throughput robotic laboratory, generating data on scales previously not possible to feed deep AI algorithms, and searching and mapping enzyme sequences to unlock and create new materials, therapeutics, and molecular products previously unimaginable. Visit www.aetherbio.com to learn more about how Aether is catalyzing the next industrial revolution.

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