Colossal Biosciences Inc. is about to turn six months old, and it has already raised $75 million.
It announced its latest funding haul March 9: a $60 million series A round that testifies to the intrigue surrounding Colossal. The company, led by CEO and co-founder Ben Lamm, emerged from stealth in 2021 with a vision to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction within the next four to six years.
Colossal has built a leadership team fit for its bold ambitions. Lamm is a multi-time founder who helped start companies such as Austin-based Hypergiant, which aims to prepare companies for the future of artificial intelligence. Also on board as co-founder of Colossal is famed geneticist George Church, the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and a pioneer in gene-editing technologies.
Beyond its vision of restoring woolly mammoths to the arctic tundra, Colossal aims to channel its genetic engineering efforts into advancements in human health, food production and environmental impact reduction, among other uses.
The latest $60 million raise for the biosciences and genetic engineering company was led by billionaire businessman Thomas Tull, CEO of Tulco LLC and the former CEO of Legendary Entertainment and a producer on Hollywood films such as "Inception" and "The Dark Knight." Lamm called Tull's involvement as an investor a "paradigm shift" for his company — in part because of Tull's belief in the future applications of the technology behind Colossal.
“He’s done a bunch of AI technology startups and he really cares about American technology,” Lamm said. “What was incredible is, he’s a huge George Church fan. A lot of people get excited about the mammoth, because what’s not to get excited about. But what was amazing about Thomas was that Thomas saw through the mammoth … and was recognizing all of the technologies we were building, and how massive they could be — not just for conservation efforts and extinction efforts, but also for long-term human health care.”
Other investors included At One Ventures, Untamed Planet, Animoca Brands, Breyer Capital, Animal Capital, Arch Ventures co-founder Robert Nelsen, Paris Hilton, Bold Capital, Boost VC, Jazz Ventures, Builders VC, Green Sands Equity, Draper Associates and Charles Hoskinson.
"With this most recent financing, Colossal is positioned to realize long-researched breakthroughs that can support the restoration of healthy ecosystems," Tom Chi, founding partner of At One Ventures, said in a statement. "We will soon have the choice of moving from the role of blind destroyer of the world's species toward being the thoughtful kin of all the life around us."
One benefit of the investor group assembled for Colossal, Lamm said, is how engaged they are with the company. That means regular text exchanges with billionaires such as Tull and Cameron Winklevoss.
“These people are incredibly busy and they have a lot on their plate, but the fact that they would proactively text me saying, ‘The round’s going great, what can I do to help?’ is just really a testament to the mission and the team that we’re building," Lamm said.
Colossal employed about 19 people when it announced a $15 million seed round in September, but is now up to 48 employees between offices in Boston, Dallas (which is technically its headquarters) and Austin. Austin is home to the startup's software team, and currently comprises about 40% of the company's staff, Lamm said. The Austin office is led by co-founder and Chief Product Officer Andrew Busey, who along with Lamm co-founded companies such as Hypergiant and Conversable.
Colossal is now planning to "dramatically accelerate hiring" across a variety of roles. In Austin, Colossal is looking for a computational scientist, an engineering manager, a front-end software engineer, a senior infrastructure engineer, a senior software engineer and a software engineer, according to its jobs page.
The growth of Colossal has been apparent at every step of the company's existence. Lamm initially targeted a seed round in the neighborhood of $3 million to $5 million, only to end up raising $15 million. The series A round was a similar story, coming in oversubscribed and early — Lamm previously estimated a series A round would not occur until 2023.
Adding another $60 million to the equation now allows Colossal to do bigger, more complex experiments and open two more labs, said Lamm, who added that the company has "enough runway for years to come right now."
"Will we do another raise? Yeah, all technology companies do, because they need to be growing and investing. So we will do a series B — we’ve actually been pinged recently about a series B, before the series A closed," Lamm said. "But we’re not really focusing on that right now. We’re really just focused on team building and the science and the milestones.”
Oh, and about that mammoth: Lamm said the team at Colossal remains four to six years away from birthing its first group of mammoth calfs. He added that the team believes it is two or three years out from having its first embryo, and that the early indicators "are very positive."
