Biocatalysts are essential to the catalysis of chemical reactions for food production, pharmaceuticals, specialty chemicals, renewable energy and environmental cleanup; with their importance reflected in a growing $10 billion industrial market. But current platforms for biocatalyst discovery are too slow. Smart Microbial Cell Technology, from Los Alamos National Laboratory, is an ultra‐high‐throughput biocatalyst screening platform that alleviates the testing bottleneck in bioengineering, finds efficient and useful biocatalysts and provides delivery of optimized custom biocatalysts. This technology directly selects rare gain‐of‐function mutations needed for biocatalyst optimization at orders of magnitude faster than any current biocatalyst screening platforms on the market. The method is simple enough for minimally trained staff to execute and has the lowest consumption of reagents and labware; it can screen 107 variants using only a 1‐mL tube of reagents. Across the world, biocatalysts play a pivotal role in essential industries. With its ultrafast throughput method for scanning large numbers of genetic variations, Smart Microbial Cell Technology is a significant breakthrough in biocatalyst discovery, engineering and evolution, with benefits that will ripple across society.