Colossal Biosciences raises $200M at $10.2B valuation to bring back woolly mammoths

Colossal Biosciences, the company best known for its 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 investment firm of Guggenheim Partners co-founder Marc Walter and billionaire Thomas Tull. The funding comes two years after the company closed its previous round on a reported valuation $1.5 billion.

Why did investors pour so much capital into a company that has yet to generate any revenue and whose flagship projects are resurrecting an extinct mammoth and tasmanian tigerNot expected to be completed until 2028?

“The investor base has been very impressed with the speed at which we’ve developed new technologies,” Ben Lam, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, told TechCrunch.

The company claims that it has achieved significant success in its three main projects, which include the dodo bird in addition to the mammoth and Tasmanian tiger (also known as the thylacine), and is on or even ahead of schedule. Resurrect these creatures.

Colossal’s approach to bringing back extinct animals involves mapping species’ entire genomes and then comparing them to their closest living relative, which in the case of mammoths is the Asian elephant. This phase has been completed for mammoths and thylacines, Lam said, and now the company’s scientists are using the gene-editing tool CRISPR to edit Asian elephant cells. In the final step, those cells will be placed into an egg cell, and the embryo will be implanted into an elephant, which will give birth to a baby mammoth, Lam explained.

To achieve its goals, Colossal is developing a variety of technologies, including artificial wombs, which the company hopes will spawn future generations of “extinct” animals.

“Some of these technologies alone are world-changers for human health care, agtech, all these different sectors,” he said.

While Colossal Biosciences’ ultimate goal is to restore endangered species and increase biodiversity, the company’s primary value to investors likely lies in the potential of its technology.

Losal plans to launch three businesses over the next two years, one of which will be for its artificial womb technology, which may have applications in fertility treatments.

The company has already built two businesses: one of them, Braking, helps break down plastics and launched last year $10.5 million Seed Fund, the other forms Bio, a computational biology platform, which is protected $30 million in financing

Government cooperation is another potential source of revenue. Although Colossal offers its conservation technology to governments free of charge, Lam said some countries are asking Colossal for help in conserving endangered species. Some governments are also exploring extinction projects for animals that have cultural and, in some cases, spiritual value to humans.

If Colossal successfully regenerates and reintroduces a 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.

Lam said its three revenue streams – technology, government cooperation and biodiversity credits – could bring in billions of dollars in annual recurring revenue and they look “short-term, medium-term, long-term economic”. Company Prospects.