Colossal Biosciencesthe company famous for a mission to bring back the woolly mammoth and two other extinct species has raised a $200 million series at a $10.2 billion valuation from TWG Global, the investment firm of Guggenheim Partners co-founder Mark Walter and billionaire Thomas Toole. The funding comes two years after the company closed its previous round at a reported valuation 1.5 billion dollars.
Why did investors pour so much capital into an impressive valuation for a company that has yet to generate revenue and whose flagship projects, reviving a vanished mammoth and Tasmanian tigeraren’t they expected to be completed by 2028?
“The investor base has been very impressed with the speed at which we have created new technologies,” Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, told TechCrunch.
The company claims to have made significant discoveries in all three of its main projects, which, in addition to the mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger (also known as the thylacine), include the dodo bird, and are on or even ahead of schedule. resurrect these animals.
Colossal’s approach to bringing back extinct animals involves mapping the species’ entire genome and then comparing it to their closest living relative, which in the mammoth’s case is the Asian elephant. Lamm said that phase has been completed for the mammoth and thylacine, and now the company’s scientists are using the CRISPR gene-editing tool to edit the Asian elephant’s cells. In the final step, these cells will be placed into an egg and the embryo will be implanted into an elephant, which will give birth to a baby mammoth, Lamm explained.
To achieve its mission, Colossal builds various technologies, including artificial wombs, with which the company hopes to give birth to future generations of extinct animals.
“Some of these technologies alone are world-changing for human health, for agtech, for all these different categories,” he said.
While Colossal Biosciences’ ultimate goal is to restore extinct species and enhance biodiversity, the company’s primary value to investors likely lies in the potential of its technologies.
Colossal plans to spin off three businesses in the next two years, one of which will involve artificial womb technology that could have applications in fertility treatment.
The company has already developed two businesses: One of them, Breaking, helps break down plastics and last year created 10.5 million dollars in seed funding, while the other is Form Bio, a computational biology platform, which secured $30 million in financing.
Government partnerships are another potential source of revenue. While Colossal offers its conservation technology to governments at no cost, Lamm said some countries are asking Colossal for help in conserving endangered species. Some governments are also exploring de-extinction projects for animals that have cultural and, in some cases, spiritual value to their people.
If Colossal successfully resurrects and reintroduces any of the species into their respective ecosystems, the company expects to generate revenue through the sale of biodiversity credits, a market-based mechanism similar to carbon credits.
Lamm said all three of its revenue streams — technology, government collaboration and biodiversity credits — could generate billions of dollars in annual recurring revenue and show the “short-term, medium-term, long-term financials.” capabilities of the company.
