← Videos · Energy & Permitting

Wright Joins the PNNL Press Conference on the Genesis Mission, Dec. 4, 2025

December 4, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:23:07

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright joined a press conference at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, in the Department of Energy’s upload of the December 4, 2025 event, to commission AMP 2 — described at the event as the world’s largest automated platform for anaerobic microbial experimentation. Laboratory speakers said AMP 2 is a prototype for a much larger microbial phenotyping capability, and announced that Ginkgo Bioworks had been awarded a $47 million competitive contract to build that larger platform, with groundbreaking planned the next year and the facility expected to open by 2030, as the plans were stated at the event.

Ginkgo chief executive Jason Kelly compared an autonomous lab to an autonomous car — the scientist states the destination and the system handles the bumps — and argued AI coupled to autonomous labs could multiply the rate of discovery five or ten times. Wright, who helped dedicate and start the system, said biology has become the most exciting place for quantitative, rigorous science, and framed the Genesis Mission as harnessing artificial intelligence to advance scientific discovery, energy systems, and national defense — based among the 40,000 scientists and engineers at the national labs, he said, in close partnership with commercial businesses.

Why it matters

The PNNL commissioning is the Genesis Mission made tangible in Wright’s home territory of laboratory science: an autonomous, AI-driven platform switched on by the Secretary weeks after the mission’s signing, with a commercial partner under contract to scale it tenfold.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the Genesis Mission deliverables announced at PNNL on December 4, 2025 — AMP 2 commissioned, and the $47 million Ginkgo Bioworks contract for the larger phenotyping platform with a 2030 opening expected, all as stated at the event. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins PNNL Press Conference - December 4, 2025” (official upload, embedded above; remarks as delivered by Secretary Wright and the event speakers).