In 1662, Dutch sailors turned the dodo into a ghost story. In 2025, Colossal Biosciences just raised $120 million to bring that story back to life. This Series C extension pushes the round to $320 million and total funding to over $555 million, giving the company a $10.32 billion valuation. That’s not just venture capital, that’s a wager that extinction itself is no longer a one-way street.
Founded in 2021 by Ben Lamm, a serial entrepreneur with exits across tech and biotech, and Dr. George Church, the Harvard geneticist whose fingerprints are on half the breakthroughs in modern genomics, Colossal has gone from bold concept to global operation in four years. Dallas houses its HQ and R&D, Boston drives genomics and computational biology, Melbourne runs animal reproduction. And the dodo isn’t alone. The woolly mammoth and Tasmanian tiger are both in the pipeline, not as parlor tricks but as proof that Colossal’s genomic engineering platforms can scale across species and industries.
This round, again led by TWG Global with participation from USIT, Bob Nelsen, and filmmaker-conservationist Peter Jackson, validates more than ambition. Colossal has already achieved the first-ever long-term culture of pigeon primordial germ cells and built gene-edited chicken surrogates for avian projects. Staff has doubled since the first Series C close in January, now topping 170 across three continents. High-quality reference genomes for the Nicobar pigeon, tooth-billed pigeon, and Rodrigues solitaire are now in hand, and a Mauritius Dodo Advisory Committee is shaping conservation plans.
The leadership is equally ambitious. Ben Lamm drives strategy and scale, Dr. George Church anchors the science, Dr. Beth Shapiro directs de-extinction genomics, Adam Milne manages operations, Sam Singer steers finance, and Matt James oversees animal programs. Advisors like Nobel laureate Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi and bioethics expert Dr. Alta Charo ensure the work is both disruptive and responsible.
The capital will scale the Avian Genetics Group, expand artificial womb and PGC infrastructure, and sharpen AI-driven genome design. By year’s end, Colossal expects to complete dodo genome editing in Nicobar pigeon surrogates. In 2026, the woolly mammoth embryo program begins. By 2027, rewilding feasibility studies are scheduled. Behind those milestones, Colossal is building platforms with applications from conservation to biopharma.
The deeper shift isn’t financial or even scientific, it’s cultural. For centuries, extinction has been permanent, a closed door. Colossal is proving that with enough data, capital, and audacity, doors long sealed can be engineered open.
