These are completely different business models. This would be like looking at the Surfside condominium collapse in Miami and declaring autoCAD a “fantasy”. It makes no sense.
Now on to why Zermgen actually failed. The company has only one product out on the market called Hyaline. It is a synthetic bio based polymer film that is transparent but durable and bendable, meant to be used in products such as wearable sensors or foldable touch screen smartphones.
The company failed due to manufacturing limitations and not because using software to design synthetic bio is a “fantasy”. It’s hard for sure but people are working on it and making fantastic progress. For example see JBrowse: https://jbrowse.org/jb2/gallery
I’m going to quote the entire relevant section from the Forbes article regarding Zymergen’s collapse:
>We do not have our own commercial scale manufacturing capability,” the amended prospectus from March read, regarding Hyaline. “Currently we manufacture Hyaline and our other electronic films primarily in Japan but have established a (Contract Manufacturing Organizations) site for Hyaline in the United States. However, our U.S. CMO has informed us that we only have committed supply through the end of 2021. If we do not find and qualify an alternate source of manufacturing, are unable to increase capacity at our existing manufacturer in Japan, or do not invest in our U.S. CMO to support and increase production, acquire our U.S. CMO or otherwise manufacture Hyaline and our other films products on our own, we may not have the manufacturing capacity required to meet our commercial needs after the end of this year.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2021/08/03/as-biol...
> What does it mean to write a genome? [...] Pioneering synthetic biology companies such as Gingko Bioworks and Zymergen are already redesigning single-celled organisms like yeast and bacteria, turning them into microscopic factories that produce desirable substances.