John Cumbers, founder of SynBioBeta, joins Theral for our annual look ahead at the field of synthetic biology and the upcoming SynBioBeta 2025 conference, happening May 6–9 in San Jose. It's obviously a big year for AI, and synthetic biology is no exception. As Cumbers puts it, “Biology and AI coming together represents a huge opportunity for us to be able to understand biology and then ultimately engineer biology.” This year’s conference features a strong emphasis on AI's role in scaling and accelerating biological engineering, from foundational research to applied biotechnology.