Woolly Mammoth Revival Raises $75 Million From VC Firms, Paris Hilton

Harvard University geneticist George Church and technology entrepreneur Ben Lamm launched Colossal Biosciences in September with $15 million in seed funding. Just six months later, Colossal has raised another $60 million for the plan, despite the skepticism of some scientists. 

“I’m all in on mammoths,” said Lamm, speaking over Zoom from Dallas, where multiple models of the prehistoric beast stood on the bookshelf behind him.

“It’s like the cuddly version of a velociraptor,” said Church, who was also on the call. “They’re vegetarian, they’re not threatening.” Church sees a future where tens of thousands of mammoths roam the northern tundra of Russia, Canada and Alaska.

The Colossal-created animals would combine genetic material from modern-day Asian elephants with that of mammoth DNA frozen into ice and preserved for thousands of years. The mammoths, or “Arctic elephants,” as Church refers to them, would hopefully slow climate change in a few ways.

Church pictures herds of mammoths stomping down deep snow that insulates the ground, allowing the intense cold of winter to reach the permafrost so it can refreeze instead of melting away and releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide. He expects the mammoths would also knock down trees, clearing the way for other large animals to follow along and pack down more snow. Entire landscapes could be transformed from forest into grassland, which Church said is more efficient at photosynthesis and sequestering carbon — although the science on that isn’t always straightforward.  

To be sure, some environmental experts have questioned Colossal’s plan. The idea of resurrecting an extinct animal is so uncertain, and its potential effect on climate change so hard to predict, that it’s not a worthwhile tactic for addressing the enormous problem, said Carleton University conservation science professor Joseph Bennett. 

Colossal has attracted an eclectic mix of investors. Peter Thiel gave Church $100,000 in 2015, years before he and Lamm founded Colossal. For Colossal’s seed round of funding last year, investors included established venture capital firms Breyer Capital and Draper Associates, along with Winklevoss Capital and motivational speaker Tony Robbins. The recent round of funding announced Wednesday was led by green venture firm At One Ventures and billionaire Thomas Tull, the founder and chief executive of Tulco LLC. Tull is also the founder and former chief executive of Legendary Entertainment. Paris Hilton, the hotel heiress who’s recently become “obsessed” with non-fungible tokens, was another named investor. 

Colossal’s long-term plan to make money doesn’t rest on mammoths, however. The company’s other research, in fields ranging from genetic engineering to computational biology, could yield advances in fighting human diseases or genetic abnormalities — and Colossal has made progress over the past six months on research with commercial applications, said Lamm, who founded and sold several technology businesses to the likes of Accenture Plc and Zynga Inc. before he partnered with Church.

“The mammoth captures people’s imaginations, but for me, it’s more about the technology they’re developing,” said Tull, the Colossal investor who produced movies including “The Hangover,” “The Dark Knight” and “Jurassic World.” “Some of the things they’re working on could really help people.”

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