Colossal Biosciences cofounder and CEO Ben Lamm is worth $3.7 billion following the company’s recent fundraise at an eye-popping $10.2 billion valuation. But it has yet to be paid for reviving extinct animals or saving endangered ones.
By Amy Feldman , Forbes Staff
S erial entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard geneticist George Church started Colossal Biosciences in 2021 to bring back the woolly mammoth. It’s an idea that’s equal parts crazy and brilliant, with real-world implications for the environment, climate change and even healthcare — if they can pull it off.
With the company recently raising $200 million at a valuation of $10.2 billion, led by TWG Global, CEO Lamm is now a billionaire worth $3.7 billion, by Forbes’ estimates. Church, who started work on the concept in his lab many years before it became a company, does not have an equity stake in Colossal.
“The fact that I’m not a billionaire is almost as interesting as Ben being one,” Church said, adding, “If I had a billion dollars, I would just spend it on this.”
Church, who is 70 and known for his wild ideas, had been working on sequencing the prehistoric woolly mammoth’s genome since around 2008. “I was part of the generation that read Jurassic Park,” he said. Like many, he had an affection for big, furry extinct creatures as a kid, but unlike most he was also an expert in genomic sequencing. In 1984, he developed the first genomic sequencing method, which resulted in the first genome sequence, for the human pathogen H. pylori (which can cause stomach ulcers). He’s also cofounded some 50 biotech companies.
Church’s woolly mammoth dreams started off in his lab, with little thought of turning them into a business. The idea was so far out there that he didn’t even bring it to investors. “I was so confident that no one would fund it that I didn’t even ask,” Church said.
After giving a talk in 2013, he received $100,000 from Peter Thiel. It wasn’t even close to enough to support his research. “We were basically on life support levels of [financing] and then Ben came along and really helped raise money tremendously,” he said.
Lamm, 43, had previously founded or cofounded five companies, each of which was ultimately acquired. Among them: Hypergiant, an AI-enabled decision-making software company acquired by Josh Kushner’s venture firm Thrive Capital in 2023 for an undisclosed amount. (The vast majority of his net worth comes from Colossal.)
While still at Hypergiant, in 2019, Lamm reached out to Church after reading an article about his work on the woolly mammoth. The two met up in Church’s lab at Harvard, and ultimately launched Colossal in September 2021 with $15 million in seed funding.
The so-called de-extinction work started with digging up the remains of woolly mammoths from the Arctic permafrost and sequencing the prehistoric creature’s genome to figure out the difference between it and its closest living relative, the Asian elephant. Church and his researchers created special tools to search, understand and compare genomes with the goal of bringing the tusked Ice Age giant back to life. The company is using genetic engineering techniques that would essentially result in a mammoth-elephant hybrid that could withstand the cold.
Woolly mammoths (which are believed to have weighed between six and eight tons) are considered important because they are thought to have contributed to the preservation of the northern grasslands by grazing and trampling trees, slowing down permafrost thaw and helping keep organic carbon stored deep below the surface–an important factor in preventing climate catastrophe. Colossal hopes to create a woolly mammoth calf by 2028 (it previously said 2027). But it’s not the only extinct animal the company is targeting: the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger are also on the agenda. Lamm said he did not believe the mammoth would be the first animal to come back from extinction, implying the company is closer to resurrecting the dodo (which was extinct by 1681) or Tasmanian tiger (which was officially declared extinct in 1982), though he declined to say which one of these creatures might be first.
T o fulfill its vision, Colossal has raised a total of $435 million from top investors that include Breyer Capital and Draper Associates, as well as TWG Global, the investment firm of billionaires Mark Walter and Thomas Tull. While it does not yet have revenue from its de-extinction efforts, it has spun out two additional startups: computational biology platform Form Bio (in 2022) and biological recycling company Breaking (in 2024).
Colossal’s lack of revenue means the company’s eye-popping $10.2 billion valuation is based on investors’ belief in the future potential of this Jurassic Park-like science rather than its existing business. “Colossal is the leading company working at the intersection of AI, computational biology and genetic engineering for both de-extinction and species preservation,
