Colossal Biosciences, a company known for its mission to bring back the woolly mammoth and two other extinct species, is owned by TWG Global, the investment firm of Guggenheim Partners co-founders Mark and John Walter. raised a $200 million Series C at a valuation of $10.2 billion. Billionaire Thomas Tull. The funding comes two years after the company closed its previous round at a reported valuation of $1.5 billion.
Why are investors pouring so much capital into a company that isn't yet profitable and whose flagship project – reviving extinct mammoths and Tasmanian tigers – is expected to be completed by 2028 at eye-popping valuations? I wonder if it is?
“Our investor base is very impressed with the speed at which we are creating new technology,” Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, told TechCrunch.
The company claims to have made significant progress on all three of its major projects, including mammoths and Tasmanian tigers (also known as possums), as well as the dodo bird, and is delivering these animals on or ahead of schedule. I will revive it.
Colossal's approach to bringing back extinct animals involves mapping the entire genome of a species and comparing it to its closest living relative (in the case of the mammoth, the Asian elephant). Lam said this step has been completed for mammoths and possums, and the company's scientists are now using the gene-editing tool CRISPR to edit cells in Asian elephants. In the final stage, these cells are put into an egg cell, and the embryo is implanted into an elephant, giving birth to a baby mammoth, Lam explained.
To accomplish its mission, Colossal is building a variety of technologies, including an artificial womb, which the company hopes will lead to future generations of “endangered” animals.
“Just some of these technologies are world-changing in human medicine, agricultural technology, and all these different categories,” he said.
Although Colossal Biosciences' ultimate goal is to recover extinct species and increase biodiversity, the company's main value to investors likely lies in the potential of its technology.
Colossal plans to spin off three businesses over the next two years, one of which is related to artificial womb technology that has potential applications in infertility treatment.
The company has already spun out two businesses. One of these is Breaking, which helps break down plastic, which raised $10.5 million in seed funding last year. Another is Form Bio, a computational biology platform that has secured $30 million in funding.
Cooperation with the government is also a potential source of income. Colossal provides its conservation technology free of charge to governments, but some countries are asking Colossal to help save endangered species, Lam said. Some governments are also considering eradication projects for animals that have cultural or even spiritual value to their citizens.
If Colossal is successful in reviving any species and reintroducing them into their respective ecosystems, the company expects to generate revenue through the sale of biodiversity credits, a market-based mechanism similar to carbon credits. will be done.
Mr Lam said all three revenue streams – technology, government collaboration and biodiversity credits – could bring in billions of dollars in annual recurring revenue, and that they represented “short, medium and long term economics”. He said that Possibilities of the company.