{
  "id": 16130118,
  "title": "Palmer Luckey teams with dire wolf billionaire Ben Lamm to launch $200 million Warhound, unleashing genetically engineered clone dogs of war",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/22/palmer-luckey-teams-with-dire-wolf-billionaire-ben-lamm-to-launch-200",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-10-22T23:43:47.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Fortune",
    "slug": "fortune",
    "url": "https://fortune.com/2026/10/22/palmer-luckey-dire-wolfe-billionaire-lamm-warhound-200-million-dogs-cloned/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Two tech billionaires, Ben Lamm and Palmer Luckey, have teamed up to launch Warhound, a defense technology startup that aims to clone, gene-edit and armor America's working dogs. The goal is to bring the supply chain home from Europe. The U.S. military's K-9 Corps, established in 1942, currently has over 2,200 dog teams, but more than 80% of U.S. military working dogs are sourced from Europe. Ben Lamm, co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, explained that the military is competing with foreign governments for these dogs, and the cost of procuring them has skyrocketed due to limited breeders and rising demand.\n\nColossal Biosciences is a Dallas-based company that recently made headlines by bringing back the extinct dire wolf in April 2025. Lamm and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey believe that the same technology, combined with defense hardware, can solve the problem of unfit dogs entering military service. Warhound, a stealth startup backed by In-Q-Tel, Sequoia Capital, ARK Invest, and others, has raised a $200 million seed round. The company plans to biobank the genetic material of top-trained dogs, clone them, and edit their genes to eliminate known harmful variants linked to health issues. The first cloned dogs are expected to be delivered within two years, with Warhound also working on a \"Canine-as-a-Service\" model for the government to purchase trained dogs in a subscription-like arrangement.",
  "summary": "“A dog is the oldest autonomous system there is,” Ben Lamm, the executive who figured out how to clone dire wolves, told Fortune.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}