Ben Pouladian
Founder of BEP Research, AI Compute Economics
Twist Bioscience has real explosive upside in the AI science basket because it makes biology programmable. Its Anthropic partnership, with Claude in the loop, is already rerating the stock, and it just opened a wet lab in San Francisco. AI is moving from code into the physical sciences, and despite the jump on Google news, it is still early. x.com
Twist Bioscience is a beneficiary of AI-driven drug design because AI-designed proteins need its DNA synthesis to be built and tested. Per Anthropic, Claude designed protein binders from scratch against 14 of 15 targets, with Twist and Adaptyv Bio independently building and testing them. Twist made 1,260 computer-designed DNA strands, and those proteins bound their target 40% of the time versus 3.7% for human experts in the same test. Work that took weeks happened over a weekend. x.com x.com
Twist Bioscience could benefit as cheaper AI hypothesis generation and validation make physical experiments the bottleneck. It is currently the purest Anthropic-related biotech beneficiary in this view because Twist handles those experiments. More efficient hypothesis work may eventually ease even that bottleneck, but it is too early to give up on the opportunity. x.com
Twist Bioscience's upside is still quite nicely linked to AI-enabled design and discovery despite its run. Citrini acknowledges that run; Twist is hardly asymmetric or underappreciated here. x.com
Twist Bioscience looks more like a bubble than an investment case, even though it could benefit as AI multiplies drug candidates and pushes value up the biotech chain. It led the 2021 biotech bubble and still loses money, so buyers pay for the story, not the business. The same AI thesis is simpler and cheaper to own in vertical market software, through serial acquirers such as Constellation Software and Topicus, which gain more acquisition targets as software gets cheaper to build. x.com
Twist Bioscience is squeeze material, with a small float and 19% short interest. It is a former IBD sector leader and a rare biotech with revenue. x.com
Moderna's mRNA vaccine news and Twist Bioscience's partnership with Anthropic could spark the cancer and genomics theme across treatments, diagnostics and tools, lifting Personalis, Guardant Health, Twist, HTFL, NeoGenomics and genomics stocks broadly. x.com
Twist Bioscience is not a bet worth taking at about 25x sales. @FredaDuan's pitch that AI drug discovery makes it a bottleneck trade, with Twist expecting triple-digit growth in AI-enabled drug-discovery orders in FY26 and again in FY27, is clickbait. x.com x.com
Genomics is likely one of the most important long-term investment themes of the next decade, as AI speeds how life's information is read, understood and edited. Picks: Illumina in sequencing; Tempus AI for AI with genomic data; CRISPR Therapeutics and Beam in gene editing; uniQure (high risk, high payoff) and BioMarin (more certain) in gene therapy; Natera and Guardant Health in diagnostics; Twist Bioscience and Thermo Fisher in tools; Vertex and Alnylam in therapeutics. x.com
Biotech tools stocks such as Charles River and Illumina are in a narrative-driven mania while their fundamentals haven't really moved. Charles River is ripping after reaffirming guidance for negative revenue growth this year. Illumina hasn't grown in five years, yet trades at over 50x earnings and 35x EV/EBITDA, with merely fine margins. Five straight years of easier comparisons are being sold as a coiled spring. x.com x.com x.com
AI drug-discovery picks and shovels such as Ginkgo Bioworks, 10x Genomics, Twist Bioscience and Grail are priced on a fantasy, and secondary offerings are coming. The bet that AI will solve cancers and rare diseases within months ignores how drug discovery, regulation and trial enrollment actually work. Unlike the semiconductor comparison, these businesses have not inflected, mostly burn cash, trade at 20-30x sales and need equity to fund themselves. Buyers here become their liquidity. x.com … Show more
AI-driven discovery strengthens the biomedicine case: Anthropic says Claude found a previously unknown enzyme system in bacteriophage DNA, beside a repeating array that resembles CRISPR. Per Anthropic, the few known systems with its features can cut, copy and paste DNA, and such programmable systems have historically helped revolutionize medicine, though what this one does is not yet understood. x.com
