‘You Don’t Put Your Head in the Sand for 4 Years’: Colossal CEO Ben Lamm on Working With Trump
Wired · Brian Kahn ·
The company’s cofounder recently convinced the Trump administration to support an initiative to gather DNA samples from endangered species.
That’s how Colossal convinced an administration that hasn’t exactly been friendly to conserving land and wildlife to support an initiative to gather DNA samples from endangered species, Lamm told attendees at WIRED World Fair on Wednesday. Lamm’s company has garnered plenty of press for claiming to bring back dire wolves and creating wooly mice using gene editing as part of a greater effort to revive the wooly mammoth.
Colossal raised $230 million in its Series C last year at a valuation of $10.2 billion. The company is looking to raise a new round that would value it at between $20 billion and $30 billion, according to reporting from Axios earlier this year. The startup has spun out multiple companies, including one that uses microbes to destroy plastic. Colossal also has a stake in Warhound, a startup Lamm developed with Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey that plans to create genetically enhanced dogs for the military, law enforcement, and first responders.
But it’s the biobanking efforts that Lamm says are more important as climate change and habitat destruction puts more pressure on wildlife. (Lamm said the company is using a similar approach with Warhound with the goal of reducing dependence on what he called “puppy mills” churning out working dogs in Europe.)