TechCrunch Disrupt 2026

Ben Lamm on running de-extinction like a platform company

Ben Lamm· CEO of Colossal Biosciences at Colossal Biosciences
·~29 min·English·TechCrunch
AI CompanyBusiness Strategy
TL;DR

Colossal's CEO reframes de-extinction as the demo for a reusable synthetic-biology platform: AI narrows the genome search, the famous animals fund the research, and the real prize is 'programmable life' across medicine, agriculture, and materials.

01Core Mental Model

Run the Lab Like a Product Company

<strong>A software founder runs a 260-scientist biology lab like a product org</strong> — three disciplines fused into one pipeline, with Jira in place of academic spreadsheets.

we have 260 plus scientists, so like retraining them to work in like Jira and software versus um, you know, just spreadsheets in academia.

— Ben Lamm, TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Key Insight
Treating irreversible biology as a shippable product is the real bet here: it turns open-ended discovery into an engineering schedule. Lamm names the operating model, not the genome, as the hardest thing they built.
02Strategy

De-Extinction Gets the Headlines

<strong>The famous animals are the funnel; the business is a reusable synthetic-biology platform</strong> that also does drug discovery, plastic cleanup, and food security.

But, but, but de-extinction gets the headlines.

— Ben Lamm, TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Key Insight
The recurring public criticism — why revive extinct animals instead of saving living ones? — misreads the structure. By Lamm's own account the famous animals are how Colossal recruits and wins attention; the harder inference his model invites is that they are really marketing for a platform most people never see.
03The Method

The Sum of the Parts

<strong>They don't rebuild a whole genome; they target the conserved regions that drive an animal's core traits</strong> — the parts that make a mammoth read as a mammoth.

the areas of the genome that are conserved that drive the core phenotypes or physical attributes

— Ben Lamm, TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Key Insight
This is an engineering definition of species identity — function and recognizable traits rather than genetic purity. It quietly reframes the 'is it really a dire wolf?' debate by deciding that the conserved core, not the full sequence, is what counts.
04The AI Payload

Decades to Weeks

<strong>Their in-house platform, Genomorph, collapses years of target-hunting into weeks</strong> — narrowing a single dodo genome down to the ~60 genes that drive most of its iconic beak.

9 years, they narrowed down the targets to 300. We've now rerun that same simulation and we could have done that in weeks.

— Ben Lamm, TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Key Insight
The unlock isn't editing DNA faster — it's search. Collapsing a couple-hundred-thousand-variant hypothesis space down to a few hundred targets means the slow, costly lab work only runs on the edits that matter. The AI is a filter, not a fabricator.
05The Quiet Win

The Win With Zero Headlines

<strong>The same ancient-plus-living DNA analysis produced an mRNA vaccine for elephant herpes</strong> — the top killer of baby elephants — that Lamm says is conferring 100% resistance in testing.

elephant herpes is the number one killer of baby elephants worldwide. Kills more than poaching anything, 20%. So we have now tested successfully an mRNA vaccine in elephants that's conferring 100% resistance to that.

— Ben Lamm, TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Key Insight
The platform's real value may be the spillovers it funds quietly: conservation medicine that never trends but protects living species. It is the 'de-extinction is the demo' thesis made concrete — the headline project paid for the vaccine.
06The Stakes

Conservation Alone Isn't Working

<strong>Lamm's bet is to make conservation self-funding</strong> — revenue from the platform's medical and industrial uses underwrites tools he open-sources free to 75 partners, including the IUCN.

conservation's great, but it ain't working.

— Ben Lamm, TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Key Insight
He reframes conservation from a moral appeal, which splits along politics, into an economic engine. His aside that both parties agree 'losing species is bad' sidesteps the climate fight entirely — the business model is also the political strategy.
07The Vision

Programmable Life Is the Prize

<strong>The real prize is 'programmable life' — directed evolution across medicine, agriculture, and materials</strong>, which is why Lamm calls Colossal the most undervalued company on the planet.

we are the most undervalued company on the planet.

— Ben Lamm, TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Key Insight
The de-extinction brand is a bet that a horizontal 'life platform' is worth more than any single vertical. The mammoth is the proof-of-work that the compiler runs; the valuation claim is really a claim about how much optionality that platform holds.