I think there's also been a lot of independent academic attempts at this (see: http://klavinslab.org/ which is CS/BioE at UWash), but all kind of waded around in the shallow water.
The reason why I think this is compelling because I think almost every synthetic biologist has an existing workflow. It's basically design using some sort of CAD software, order from IDT, receive materials next day, run test by hand, ship to Genewiz for sequencing, etc. That's just one example of a workflow involving 4-5 specialized 'steps'. As the steps get cheaper/faster/better, consolidating and automating this is just a no brainer.