For this week’s Five-Minute Friday-style episode, I’m diving into a biotechnology story I found mind-blowing: bringing back extinct animals like the wooly mammoth and the dodo bird.
Specifically, today’s episode is mostly about Colossal Biosciences, a company that recently secured a staggering $200 million Series C funding round. What's even more remarkable is the valuation, at over $10 billion. That's a nearly seven-fold increase from their previous valuation just two years ago.
Now, you might be wondering – as I certainly did – why investors would pour such enormous capital into a company that hasn't generated revenue yet and whose main projects aren’t projected to be completed until 2028. The answer lies in the intersection of technological innovation and commercial potential.
First, let me break down how their de-extinction process works. In the case of Collision, they map the entire genome of extinct species like the woolly mammoth. Then, they compare the genome to that of a close living relative – in the mammoth's case, for example, that's the Asian elephant. Using CRISPR gene-editing technology, they modify the elephant's cells to match the mammoth's genetic profile. Finally, these modified cells are placed into an egg cell, and the embryo is implanted into an elephant surrogate mother.
To achieve their ambitious de-extinction goal, Colossal has developed numerous breakthrough technologies. One of the most interesting is their artificial womb technology because it isn't just about bringing back extinct species – it has potential applications in human fertility treatment and healthcare as well.
With a bit of context on Collosal’s tech in our back pocket, let’s now get into the three key ways that they’re creating commercial value. First, they're spinning off technology companies. They've already launched two successful ventures: Breaking, which uses biological microorganisms to break down plastic waste into harmless organic matter, and Form Bio, a computational biology platform for developing gene therapies. These spinoffs have already secured millions in additional funding.
Second, Collosal’s collaborating with governments on conservation projects for endangered species (e.g., Northern White Rhinoceros technically isn’t extinct, but there are only two left and they’re both female). And third, Collosal’s positioning themselves to enter the emerging biodiversity credits market – this is something like carbon credits, but for biodiversity restoration.
A lesson for me about this story is how it demonstrates the exponential value of ambition paired with technological innovation. When you set out to solve really ambitious, really hard problems – like bringing back extinct species – you can develop solutions that have widespread applications across multiple industries like the artificial wombs for human fertility and the clean up of plastic waste that I mentioned above. Each one of the indirect applications Collosal has developed while pursuing their core mission of de-extinction could have such a large impact that they each eventually generate billions of dollars of revenue.
From a data science perspective, Collosal’s work is a perfect example of how computational biology, genetic algorithms, and advanced data analysis are transforming what we thought was possible. The company's work combines massive genomic datasets, machine learning for genetic analysis, and precise gene-editing technologies to potentially jaw-dropping effect: Perhaps it won’t be too long before you can head to a zoo to see a wooly mammoth.
What other animals are candidates for de-extinction? We probably won’t have a Jurassic Park like in the film series because well-preserved DNA samples are critical for de-extinction. We also need a closely related living species that can serve as a surrogate and a suitable habitat needs to still exist for the de-extincted animal to be reintroduced into. So, yeah, probably no dinosaurs, but some other candidates include:
The dodo bird and Tasmanian tiger (both of which are active Collosal projects)
The passenger pigeon (which is being tackled by a different firm called Revive & Restore)
Caribbean Monk Seal
Quagga (a subspecies of plains zebra)
Great Auk (a flightless bird from the North Atlantic)
Heath Hen (a subspecies of prairie chicken)
Pretty wild, no? Whether de-extinction ends up working out or not, the big mission is bringing us a slew of other biotechnological innovations, which brings me back to my inspirational thought of the week: Sometimes the most valuable innovations come not from trying to solve immediate market needs, but from pursuing seemingly impossible dreams. What seemingly impossible goals could you be dreaming up to tackle by leveraging the exponential technologies that are available at your fingertips? Thanks to A.I., your dreaming can be computationally augmented if you like, potentially to great effect. If you don’t already have impossible goals in mind, you can head to your favorite conversational A.I. interface — as of the past few weeks, that might be OpenAI or Google’s “deep research” features, which are tremendously powerful for big questions like this.
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