Show Notes
Ben Lamm is the Co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences + their AI spinout, Astromech. Colossal is the $12 billion de-extinction company using genome engineering, AI and reproductive technologies to bring extinct species back to life, while Astromech is its AI biology spinout, now valued at $3.8 billion. We went inside Colossal’s lab to see its Gen 2 woolly mice and sat down with Ben to discuss the technology behind the dire wolf, the race to bring back the woolly mammoth, and the much bigger business being built underneath de-extinction. Colossal has raised $635 million, including a recent $400 million round that was originally targeted at $200 million. Ben explains why he still believes Colossal is “one of the most undervalued companies in the world,” and how technologies developed inside the company are creating entirely new businesses. Astromech, the AI biology spinout Co-founded by Lamm and George Church, just raised $20 million at a $3.8 billion valuation, bringing total funding to $60 million. Astromech is using evolutionary and multispecies genomic data to build AI models designed to predict biological change, with potential applications across cancer, disease and drug discovery. We cover Colossal’s rise, woolly mice, dire wolves, mammoths, artificial wombs, genome editing, AI and biology, Astromech, and what happens when humans learn to program life.
Ben Lamm: https://x.com/BenLamm Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea Sourcery: https://x.com/sourceryy
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𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Ben Lamm, Co-Founder & CEO at Colossal Biosciences (01:07) Inside Colossal's De-Extinction Lab (06:02) The AI idea that could save the planet (08:28) Revealing Colossal's woolly mice (10:49) Wild requests they get every day (13:35) Colossal's business model (15:07) How Colossal raised $635 million (20:17) How AI is converging with Biotech (22:44) How ancient DNA actually gets to the lab (26:24) The real stats behind Mass Extinction (32:07) Will their animals ever live in the wild? (41:44) Choosing their earliest backers (52:51) Why they refuse to work on Humans (58:07) Are they secretly working on Aliens?
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