How Colossal is incubating an empire of startups
Colossal Biosciences claims to have brought back the dire wolf , and is now hard at work on its quest to resurrect several other species, including the woolly mammoth and the moa, a giant extinct bird. While that’s happening, the company is also pursuing a quieter, more near-term ambition: incubating a cadre of startups that can capitalize on Colossal’s technology and turn it into distinct…
Colossal Biosciences, the company behind the resurrection of the dire wolf, is also focusing on creating a network of startups to leverage its technology for various ventures. The company has already spun out three startups: Form Bio, which has raised millions to develop an AI platform for scientific research; Breaking, aimed at scaling a microbe to degrade plastics; and Astromech, which is in the process of building a genetics data platform.
Astromech has already mapped 46 genes related to cellular maintenance, cancer resistance, and longevity, and has raised about $60 million in total. The company's CEO, Ben Lamm, has expressed ambitions to have dominion over life, including the ability to eradicate invasive species and engineer plants with various proteins. While the de-extinction aspect of Colossal's work has garnered attention, the company is also quietly developing a range of biological platforms that could impact not only our natural world but also our health and our future as a species.
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