Twist Bioscience Corporation

Twist Bioscience Corporation, a for-profit synthetic biology manufacturer based in South San Francisco, California, serves as a prime contractor to federal research agencies supplying synthetic DNA, custom oligonucleotide pools, gene panels, library preparation kits, and related genomics reagents on a full-and-open basis with no set-aside designations across its contract footprint.

Twist Bioscience's customer base concentrates heavily in biomedical research and public health. The top five funding agencies by award count account for 60% of recent awards, led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Pittsburgh (9 awards, $1.6 million combined potential value), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (7 awards, $256 thousand), the National Human Genome Research Institute (4 awards, $51 thousand), the Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Integrated Service Network 22 (3 awards, $159 thousand), and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (3 awards). However, the top-customers-by-potential-value ranking diverges significantly: the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute anchors the portfolio with 2 awards worth $5 million combined potential value (predominantly a single $5 million definitive contract for a portable rapid COVID-19 diagnostic test under the RADX TECH PROJECT 6818 awarded in November 2021), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contributes 1 award worth $4.5 million. These two agencies represent approximately 77% of the portfolio's combined potential value despite accounting for a small share of award count. The CDC Pittsburgh and NIH NIAID sustain the largest transactional volumes through numerous small purchase orders ranging from $11 thousand to $77 thousand per award.

Recent contract work centers on custom research inputs: a $150 thousand firm fixed-price definitive contract from the Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Integrated Service Network 12 for a humanized monoclonal antibody product (September 2024); a $157 thousand CDC purchase order for lab supplies (September 2024); a $64 thousand VA purchase order for FFPE methylome sample processing and analysis in support of lymphoid malignancy research (July 2024); a $77 thousand NIH National Institute on Aging purchase order for custom cloned pooled oligo libraries (July 2023); and a $60 thousand NIAID purchase order for oligo pools (September 2022). Activity has been volatile year to year — five awards in 2022, five in 2023, eleven in 2024, five in 2025, and three in 2026 through mid-June — with only two awards (combined potential value $145 thousand) facing ultimate completion inside the next twenty-four months and thus exposing the vendor to minimal recompete cliff pressure.

Twist Bioscience operates primarily as a prime contractor (86% of awards) across research and development in biotechnology (21 awards by NAICS classification) and biological product manufacturing (7 awards), with a smaller subcontractor footprint. The vendor holds six sub-awards spanning high-throughput genotyping and DNA sequencing work under the Battelle National Biodefense Institute's National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center FFRDC contract with the Department of Homeland Security (four contract sub-awards, awards in July 2024, March 2024, April 2025, and December 2025) and one federal grant sub-award as a recipient under a Purdue University NSF Ideas Lab grant on programmable small molecule biosynthesis (June 2025). The combined invoiced value across prime and sub work totals $12.8 million against a combined potential value of $12.2 million, indicating that a portion of the portfolio has been fully obligated beyond ceiling.