A quiet revolution is reshaping the global economy, happening inside fermenters and freeze dryers, and you should be paying attention.
Biomanufacturing – the use of living cells as programmable factories to produce materials, chemicals, fuels, foods, and medicines – is moving from niche biotechnology to the core of industrial production.
The numbers are staggering: the global bioeconomy is already valued at more than $4 trillion and is projected by McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and the World Economic Forum to reach $30 trillion by 2050, roughly a third of global GDP. For perspective, that would make biology tomorrow larger than today’s entire semiconductor and data-center economy combined.
Largely fueled by the Healthcare and Agricultural industries, this is already happening, and fast.
Why Now? The Four Converging Forces
1. DNA Synthesis and Reading Costs Have Collapsed Faster Than Moore’s Law
Since 2003, the cost of DNA sequencing has fallen >300,000-fold and the cost of DNA synthesis >10,000-fold. We can now read and write genetic code cheaper than we can store data on hard drives. This is the “transistor moment” for biology.
2. CRISPR and Engineered Biology Have Become Predictable Engineering Disciplines
Ten years ago, editing a microbe was heavily artisanal, requiring deep expertise and expensive labor. Today, companies such as Ginkgo Bioworks run robotic foundries that design, build, and test thousands of strains per week. Failure rates have dropped from >90 % to <30 % in many classes of products.
3. The World Is Running Out of Petrochemistry at the Worst Moment
Demand for carbon-based molecules (plastics, fibers, chemicals, fuels) is still growing, but new oil is increasingly expensive and geopolitically risky. Biology offers a renewable, domestic, carbon-capturing alternative that can use sugar, waste biomass, or even CO₂ + green hydrogen as feedstock.
4. National Security and Supply-Chain Shocks Have Created Political Will
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed lethal fragility in pharmaceutical supply chains. The 2022 baby-formula crisis showed that even food can become a single-point-of-failure risk. Meanwhile, China now produces >90 % of certain active pharmaceutical ingredients and dominates rare-earth-adjacent biochemical precursors. No administration – red or blue – wants to repeat those experiences.
What Is Already Being Made (Profitably) With Biology
My top 3:
- Collagen, gelatin, and hyaluronic acid
- Insulin, semaglutide (Ozempic), and hundreds of antibodies now made in engineered cells instead of chemical plants
- Perfume and cosmetics using fermented scent molecules instead of petrochemicals or wild harvesting
Other other incredibly interesting biological products:
- Spider silk stronger than steel
- Leather without animals
- Egg white and milk proteins without chickens or cows
- Nylon, spandex, and polyurethane precursors
- Aviation fuel from CO₂ and renewable electricity
- Rose oil and vanilla that no longer require plantations in Madagascar
Every one of these products is already cheaper at scale than the incumbent petrochemical or agricultural route, or soon will be.
The Global Race Is On – and the US Is Missing Out
China declared synthetic biology a strategic priority in its 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) and is investing tens of billions through the Chinese Academy of Sciences, BGI, and regional bio-clusters. The National Development and Reform Commission explicitly lists “biomanufacturing” as one of seven frontier industries targeted for global leadership by 2035.
Europe’s Horizon Europe and national programs (UK, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands) have committed >€20 billion. Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and even relatively small nations such as Denmark and the Netherlands are building massive fermentation capacity.
The United States? The Biden administration’s 2022 Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing, the follow-on National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative, and the CHIPS & Science Act’s modest bio provisions were important signals, but total new federal money committed so far is in the low single-digit billions – less than one year of China’s announced spend.
Additionally, current processes are antiquated and need to be made more efficient in order to enable scale faster and more efficiently than ever before. We need to 10X our biomanufacturing capacity through new technologies and processes.
Why America Must Go Big – and How
Biomanufacturing is the next platform technology, like semiconductors in the 1960s or the internet in the 1990s. Whoever owns the organisms owns the IP, the data, and the supply chains for the 21st-century economy.
As ‘Reindustrialize’ put it…
Americans built the 20th Century.
But if we are to build the 21st, we need to focus on the real revolution: materials and organisms that can create, support, and enhance life faster and more efficiently than ever.
We need to 10X regenerative matrix manufacturing to support large-scale tissue growth.
We need to 10X bioreactors to support large-scale cell reproduction.
We need to implement AI and ML models to stimulate and guide cell & tissue growth.
We need to prepare for a future where we manufacture organs like parts of our car.
In my view, that’s the true secret to longevity. Living forever won’t be about a vitaminic supplement- it’s going to be about changing our parts and having readily available replacements so we can eliminate chronic disease from the root and make our bodies as efficient and healthy as humanly possible.
A serious American strategy requires five elements:
1. Scale Fermentation Capacity by an Order of Magnitude
The US needs 10–20 million liters of new, flexible, GMP-capable fermentation capacity by 2030. The DoD’s Defense Production Act Title III authority and the Department of Energy’s loan programs office should fund half a dozen 100,000–500,000 L “bio-foundries” in the Midwest and South, where feedstock (corn stover, municipal waste, CO₂) is abundant and cheap.
2. Create a DARPA for Industrial Biology
ARPA-H is health-focused. We need an ARPA-B (or simply a re-oriented portion of ARPA-E) with $2–3 billion per year and the authority to make large, high-risk bets on radical new host organisms, continuous fermentation, cell-free systems, and gas fermentation.
3. Fix the Regulatory Bottleneck
USDA, EPA, and FDA regulations written for 20th-century agriculture and chemistry are slowing down 21st-century biology. A single, fast-track regulatory pathway for contained fermentation or freeze-dried products (90% of the opportunity) would unlock hundreds of billions in private investment.
4. Train 200,000 New Workers
Community colleges in Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, and Louisiana can spin up two-year bio-manufacturing operator programs in 18 months. The model already exists (NIIMBL, BioMADE). Fund it at the same scale as the CHIPS Act’s workforce provisions.
5. Use Anchor Orders from the Federal Government
The single largest buyer of food (DoD, school lunch program), fuel (DLA-Energy), and pharmaceuticals (VA, Medicare) is the U.S. government. Guaranteed purchase contracts at modest premiums for five years would de-risk the first wave of commercial plants, exactly the way the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard created the corn-ethanol industry (which we now want to replace with something better).
The Bottom Line
In 1941, the United States turned car factories into tank and aircraft factories in 18 months and won a world war. In 2025, we have the chance to turn the Midwest into the world’s largest precision-fermentation and freeze-drying cluster and win the defining economic competition of the century.
Biology is the original distributed manufacturing platform: self-replicating, self-repairing, carbon-negative, and capable of running on sunlight and waste. The countries that master large-scale biomanufacturing will own the material basis of the next economy – and the strategic autonomy that comes with it.
The revolution is already underway. The only question is whether America will lead it, follow it, or watch from the sidelines while others do. History suggests we regret the third option the most.
What role will you play?