Life finds a way. So does Twist Bioscience.

The business is never afraid to develop new applications for synthetic DNA and oligos, but is equally quick to pull the plug when things aren't working. Most companies never come close to finding that balance, but Twist Bioscience has perfected it.

As the latest example, roughly 10% of the company's revenue was at risk when federal grants dried up because America now hates science. Industrial customers also stalled out due to the constraints imposed by the biotech winter. Twist Bioscience simply became more important to its core customer group, diagnostics companies, and found another growth shoot from drug developers.

Although the number of active customers has grown less than 30% in the last four years, the business is now shipping almost twice as many genes per customer (116 vs. 62). Part of that is driven by the emergence of molecular residual disease (MRD) tools, but the technology platform is also quickly catching on among drug developers for drug discovery applications. In fact, they became the top source of revenue in fiscal Q2 2026 for the first time ever.

That's not to say Twist Bioscience doesn't face some headwinds. Growth is still slowing. If drug developer customers don't prove durable, then the wheels could come off for the synthetic DNA pioneer. The business ended March 2026 with $172 million in cash. That's relatively healthy considering it has a light quarterly cash burn of about $17 million, but it seems like the company will need one more capital raise before it hits escape velocity.