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Colossal Biosciences, the company famously on a mission to bring back the woolly mammoth and two other extinct species, has raised a $200 million Series C at a $10.2 billion valuation from TWG Global, the co-founder’s investment firm of Guggenheim Partners Mark Walter, and billionaire Thomas Tull. The funding comes two years after the company closed its previous round at a reported valuation of $1.5 billion.
Why did investors pour so much capital at a staggering valuation jump for a company that has yet to generate any income and whose flagship projects resurrected an extinct mammoth and tasmanian tigerare they not expected to be completed until 2028?
“The investor base has been very impressed by the speed at which we have created new technologies,” Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, told TechCrunch.
The company claims that it has made significant discoveries in all three main projects, which, in addition to the mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger (also known as the thylacine), include the dodo bird, and is on schedule or even ahead to him raise these animals.
Colossal’s approach to bringing extinct animals back involves mapping the species’ entire genome and then comparing it to its closest living relative, which in the mammoth’s case is the Asian elephant. Lamm said this phase has been completed for the mammoth and the thylacine, and now the company’s scientists are using the CRISPR gene editing tool to edit the cells of the Asian elephant. In the last stage, these cells will be put into an egg cell, and the embryo will be implanted into an elephant, which will give birth to a mammoth, Lamm explained.
To achieve its mission, Colossal has built various technologies, including artificial wombs, which is how the company hopes future generations of “de-extinct” animals will be born.
“Some of these technologies are just changing the world for human health, for agtech, for all these different categories,” he said.
While the ultimate goal of Colossal Biosciences is to restore extinct species and enhance biodiversity, the company’s primary value to investors is probably in the potential of its technologies.
Colossal plans to spin off three companies in the next two years, one of which will be for its artificial womb technology, which could have applications in fertility treatment.
The company has already launched two companies: one of them, Breaking, helps to break down plastics and last year it was resurrected. $10.5 million in seed funding, while the other is Form Bio, a computational biology platform, which ensured $30 million in funding.
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 preserving endangered species. Some governments have also explored extinction projects for animals that have cultural and, in some cases, spiritual value to their people.
If Colossal resurrects and successfully reintroduces one of the species into its respective ecosystems, the company anticipates generating revenue through the sale of biodiversity credits, a market-based mechanism similar to carbon credits,
Lamm said all three revenue streams — technology, government collaboration and biodiversity credits — could bring in billions of dollars in annual recurring revenue, and show the “short-term, medium-term economics, long term”. the potential of the company.
