AI + Synthetic Biology: The Most Transformative Technology in Human History | Ben Lamm (Colossal)

Summary

• Lamm frames de-extinction as a demanding proving ground for an AI-enabled synthetic-biology platform, not a novelty end market. He says, “Without AI, we would not be able to do anything that we’re doing.” Diamandis cited a rise from zero to a $10 billion valuation in four years, called Colossal massively undervalued, and said the company now employs 260 scientists—200 in the U.S. and 60 in Australia—plus AI programmers.
• The platform is designed to produce focused businesses whenever a conservation technology proves commercially broader. Breaking, the first spinout, uses an editable microbial consortium that “actually breaks the chemical bonds” of plastic instead of creating smaller microplastics. Diamandis described a dozen-company pipeline; Lamm’s model gives discoveries dedicated teams and capital while sharing improvements across the ecosystem.
• Governments could become foundational customers for biodiversity infrastructure and species preservation. Lamm said the UAE agreed to put hundreds of millions of dollars into the world’s first animal biovault initiative, including reference genomes, digital backups, globally shared data and a public living lab—a nine-figure initiative for each side. He also relayed an EY estimate linking extinction-related consumer demand, education and ancillary effects to a potential $1.7 trillion opportunity.
• Artificial wombs are the potential scaling unlock, but Lamm’s explicit disclosure is that all three projects “don’t work yet.” The northern white rhino illustrates the target economics: two related females, 18 related embryos and roughly $25 million spent annually keeping two animals alive. Colossal has meanwhile acquired cloning companies; Lamm said ViaGen’s cloning efficiency was about 78%, versus roughly 2% ordinarily.
• The addressable market extends into disease-resistant animals and plants, vaccines and ecosystem adaptation. Lamm cited chytrid-resistant amphibians as one actionable case and estimated the broader market at hundreds of billions of dollars today. He roughly characterized 99% of people fluent in synthetic biology and genome engineering as focused on human healthcare, while noting that Australia legally treats reconstructed Tasmanian tigers as GMOs.
• Gene-drive biocontrol targets an invasive-species problem Lamm sized at $5.4 trillion globally, while saying the real figure is likely larger. Modified screwworms producing all-male later generations could displace poisoning, trapping and killing while allowing animals to live normally. Lamm once doubted the field after mosquito controversies, but changed his view because Colossal’s approach includes containment and rollback.
• Technical compounding, rather than revived-animal spectacle, is the moat investors are being asked to underwrite. Colossal progressed from a few edits at 40% efficiency to hundreds of dispersed edits at 90%, with Lamm expecting thousands in coming years. He claimed DNA delivery was already 5× the largest benchmark he had seen and could reach 20× by year-end. Artificial-womb research has yielded hydrogel, microfluidics and embryo-grading technology that might transfer to IVF.

Deep dive

1. De-extinction is the stress test for an AI biology engine

• The founding choice came from Lamm asking George Church which unlimited-capital lifetime project he would pursue. Church answered immediately: restore mammoths, rewild them and build technologies applicable to species protection and human healthcare. Lamm initially intended to fund it as a side project, found it “really interesting” and became CEO.

• Lamm chose de-extinction because it demands computational biology, cellular and genetic engineering, cloning, somatic cell nuclear transfer and eventually artificial wombs. It also forces work on genotype-to-phenotype relationships, ancestral-state reconstruction and comparative genomics—the difficult pieces needed for a reusable biological-products platform.

• Publicly announced targets include the woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, dodo and moa; dire wolves have already been produced, with more coming. The sharpest proof point was taking a 73,000-year-old skull and using it to “make puppies” in 18 months—Romulus and Remus.

• Diamandis said Colossal rose from zero to a $10 billion valuation in four years and called it massively undervalued. Lamm put headcount at 260 scientists, split between the U.S. and Australia. Although the company does not always lead publicly with AI, his categorical assessment was that “without AI we would not be able to do anything that we’re doing.”

2. Platform outputs become spinouts and sovereign infrastructure

• Breaking began with what looked like a single plastic-degrading enzyme but proved to be a consortium of microbes working together. Colossal edits individual microbes to vary their enzymes across plastic types; directed evolution and its broader pipeline increased range and speed, while the resulting process breaks chemical bonds rather than merely fragmenting plastic into smaller pieces.

• Diamandis floated a hypothetical supplement that could destroy microplastic bonds in the gut before absorption. Lamm instead emphasized the broader problem: plastics affect food supplies and reproductive tissue and can sometimes cross the blood-brain barrier, so there will not be “one solution to rule them all.”

• Diamandis described Colossal as a parent company spinning out about a dozen businesses, with some undisclosed projects he said were “as big or bigger.” Lamm’s architecture pairs those spinouts with sovereign projects: discoveries receive dedicated teams and capital while technical improvements can be shared across the ecosystem.

• Lamm relayed an EY estimate that 12.5% of global consumers annually buy something connected to extinction, describing a potential $1.7 trillion opportunity when education and ancillary effects are included. Separately, he said the UAE agreed to put hundreds of millions of dollars into the world’s first animal biovault initiative, including reference genomes, digital backups and globally shared biodiversity data. The associated living lab is a nine-figure initiative for both Colossal and the country, with educational content built into a high-traffic facility rather than a hidden storage site.

3. Conservation becomes scalable only when reproduction does

• Lamm explicitly disclosed that Colossal’s three animal-clade artificial-womb projects “don’t work yet.” The intended stack combines biobanking, synthetic biology, robotic automation, AI, computer vision and artificial wombs to “productionize species development,” especially where gestations are long or genetic diversity is bottlenecked.

• The northern white rhino makes the economics concrete: two related females are functionally extinct, their 18 embryos are related, and roughly $25 million annually is spent keeping the animals alive. Lamm’s proposed chain is to introduce diversity from preserved specimens and synthetically, gestate animals at scale, then free part of that spending for needs such as water and education.

• Diamandis said Colossal had acquired the world’s top two cloning companies; Lamm identified ViaGen as the main company and said Colossal bought another as well. He said only 18 species have ever been cloned, 15 by ViaGen; ordinary efficiency is roughly 2%, versus ViaGen’s fairly consistent 78%. ViaGen produced the only endangered-species clones, including black-footed ferrets, while its profitable consumer dog-cloning business remains supported.

• Regulation is part of the manufacturing problem. Lamm said even a “100% genetically identical” Tasmanian tiger assembled from 53 animals spanning about 300 years is legally a GMO in Australia. Rewilding therefore required persuading the Australian government that an anti-GMO narrative would prohibit restoration of the species it wanted returned.

4. Biocontrol turns ecosystem damage into a major market

• Disease resistance is an adjacent product, not a footnote. Lamm highlighted chytrid as the leading current extinction driver for frogs and amphibians; engineering resistant frogs and salamanders could protect ecosystems. He described analogous applications for animals and plants, as well as common vaccine and resistance approaches, while explicitly saying Colossal is not currently working on corals.

• Gene drives target an invasive-species problem Lamm valued at $5.4 trillion globally as currently measured, while arguing that the true figure is larger. His urgent example was screwworm moving through Honduras and Mexico into southern Texas, threatening cattle and bison; releasing modified insects whose later generations are all male could shrink the population without environmental poison, trapping or killing.

• Lamm preserved the objection: stopping mosquito gene-drive releases “wasn’t necessarily a bad idea” because mosquitoes participate in food webs. He said that two years earlier he would have been skeptical of biocontrol and gene drives after seeing problems with mosquito dispersal, but now views Colossal’s containment and rollback capabilities as important. He said U.S. invasive-species economic impact exceeds $500 billion annually, while explicitly acknowledging that he did not know actual countermeasure spending.

5. IVF spillovers and edit scale reveal the technical moat

• After going through IVF, Lamm called embryo selection from one morphological snapshot with poor imaging “archaic and emotional.” In non-model species and some model species such as mice, embryos that look unlikely to win on day two, three or five can later prove healthiest because development speeds up and slows down at different stages.

• Colossal built a hydrogel and microfluidic device that made embryos healthier and allowed mouse and non-model-species embryos to develop further, alongside a grading scale Lamm says is more efficient and accurate. The company does not perform this work in humans, but he argued that the technology could eventually transfer to human IVF.

• Two or three years ago, a few edits at 40% efficiency beat a roughly 15% norm; Colossal now performs hundreds of precise, dispersed genome edits at 90%, with Lamm expecting thousands in coming years. He also claimed its large-scale DNA-synthesis delivery was already 5× the largest delivery he had seen and said he thought it could reach 20× by year-end.

• Lamm attributed those gains to a product-and-systems approach to synthetic biology that leverages AI, rather than one-off point solutions focused on human healthcare. Human-health applications would be licensed or spun out rather than built inside Colossal’s core. Lamm said the company thinks de-extinction and species preservation represent a $10 trillion opportunity and described it as “opportunistic and capitalist,” while insisting that difficult problems need dedicated teams. Spinouts such as Breaking can be seeded with Colossal’s scientific team, capital and intercompany agreements that share editing efficiencies and other technical gains back across the ecosystem.