Synthetic Biology Entrepreneur Ben Lamm Pursues Species Resurrection to Combat Climate Crisis

Ben Lamm doesn't look like someone trying to save the planet. The 43-year-old Dallas entrepreneur is understated, with an easy humor and casual demeanor — more likely to loan you calculus notes than pitch you on de-extinction. Yet this Texas billionaire has become a driving force in conservation, directing Colossal Biosciences toward one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings of our time: using synthetic biology to bring extinct species back to life and stop ecological collapse.

Lamm co-founded Colossal in 2021 with Harvard geneticist George Church, a pioneer in synthetic biology. Their scientists now work to resurrect the woolly mammoth, the thylacine, and the dodo bird. But this isn't about recreating Jurassic Park. The goal is ecological restoration — reviving keystone species that once stabilized entire ecosystems and creating carbon sinks far more efficient than geoengineering alternatives.

"Synthetic biology and engineering life will be more impactful than computer bytes or even fire," Lamm says. "If we can truly understand genomes, we can do everything."

Starting from scratch, Lamm raised over $400 million from venture capitalists including Paris Hilton and billionaire Thomas Tull for a project offering no immediate financial returns. Colossal Biosciences is now valued above $10 billion. A team of more than 130 scientists uses gene splicing, CRISPR technology, and AI to rebuild ancient DNA of apex predators — the foundational species that anchored healthy food chains. When these animals vanish, ecosystems collapse in rapid succession.

The numbers are sobering. When Colossal launched in 2021, projections warned of losing 10 percent of global biodiversity. Today that estimate sits at 50 percent. "That's not a great trend line in only four years," Lamm admits.

Recent research suggests his approach works. A study showed that restoring nine wildlife species — marine fish, hawks, grey wolves, wildebeest, sea otters, musk oxen, African forest elephants, and American bison — could store more than six billion tons of CO2 annually. Whales offer another example: restoring five whale species to pre-whaling populations could add 600,000 tons of carbon storage yearly, as their waste feeds carbon-storing phytoplankton.

East Africa's wildebeest demonstrate the principle in action. When populations crashed in the mid-20th century due to poaching and disease, the Serengeti grasslands grew wild, fueling massive fires that released gigatons of carbon dioxide. Conservation efforts rebuilt the herds from 300,000 to 1.5 million, restoring grazing patterns and halting the fires. The animals' nutrient-rich dung became so powerful a carbon sink that it now offsets Kenya and Tanzania's annual fossil fuel emissions.

Yellowstone tells a similar story. Wolves hunted nearly to extinction in the early 1900s triggered a cascade through the entire park. Without predators, elk overate willow trees that beavers needed for dam-building. The beavers abandoned the park, rivers clogged with debris, and the ecosystem deteriorated. In 1995, fourteen wolves returned. Suddenly elk fled for their lives, beavers rebuilt their dams, and nature rebalanced. "Nature knows what it's doing," Lamm says.

Colossal made headlines by unveiling its first successful de-extinction project: dire wolves. These ice-age apex predators roamed the Americas until extinction 12,000 years ago. Scientists made just 20 edits across 14 genes in common grey wolves, using DNA fragments from a 13,000-year-old Ohio tooth and a 72,000-year-old Idaho ear bone. Domestic dogs served as surrogate mothers for the engineered embryos.

In October 2024, Romulus and Remus debuted. Their sister Khaleesi arrived in January. Photos circulated widely showing the white-furred pups with hazel eyes playing in a 2,000-acre preserve, gnawing sticks and howling. They resemble Great Pyrenees mixed with huskies — nothing like the fearsome Game of Thrones creatures. But as testosterone surges during maturity, the genetic modifications are expected to deliver dire wolf traits: larger teeth and jaws, more muscular legs, more powerful shoulders.

While the pups captured media attention, Colossal scientists also used cloning techniques to birth two litters of red wolves, the world's most critically endangered wolf species. These efforts open doors to broader conservation initiatives. "They're an amazing opportunity for us to learn tons and tons about de-extinction, about cloning, about genetic editing and all the effects after that," Colossal's chief animal officer Matt James told CNN.

Skepticism persists among scientists. Critics argue these aren't true dire wolves but genetically modified grey wolves. Ethical concerns abound regarding de-extinction of species when so many living animals face extinction. Jacquelyn Gill, a University of Maine paleoecologist, told the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Colossal's work hasn't truly brought a species back from extinction, dismissing the publicity as "science by press release in the absence of a paper." Dire wolves went extinct partly because they starved, she notes, raising questions about whether resurrected species can survive in modern ecosystems.

The whole enterprise began almost accidentally. In 2019, Lamm cold-called George Church, the Harvard geneticist considered the father of synthetic biology. Lamm wanted to discuss software applications for synthetic biology and AI. Church seemed interested, but Lamm pushed further: "If you had unlimited capital and you could only focus on one project for the rest of your life, what would you do?"

Church's answer: "I would bring back the woolly mammoth and build technologies for conservation and stop the permafrost from melting."

Lamm thought it was a joke. That night he watched Church on 60 Minutes and The Colbert Report. He called back the next day. Seven days later, he was in Church's lab. A couple months after that, Lamm resigned from his satellite software and defense company to pursue mammoths.

The woolly mammoth has become their "North Star." These giant herbivores, roughly African elephant-sized with 15-foot tusks, dominated the frozen tundra of Europe, Asia, and North America for two hundred thousand years until about 10,000 years ago. Lamm's team isn't building Jurassic Park replicas — they're engineering a mammoth-Asian elephant hybrid bred for cold survival traits: fuzzy coats and thick blubber layers.

The genetic precision is staggering. While over a million genetic differences separate mammoths from Asian elephants, the Asian elephant shares closer ancestry with woolly mammoths than with African elephants. "It turns out that there are only about 85 genes that drive these cold-tolerant phenotypes," Lamm explains. "We do know now which genes make a mammoth a mammoth."

Released into the Arctic, the hybrids could restore mammoth function: trampling snow, knocking down trees, restoring grasslands that reflect heat, and preventing forest cover that insulates soil. Keeping ground frozen prevents release of an estimated 300 billion metric tons of carbon and methane locked in permafrost.

Lamm's conviction hardened after visiting the Army's Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility in Fox, Alaska. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officer told him: "We're not scared of nuclear war. We're scared of these tunnels melting. If these melt, there's really no hope."

Beyond resurrection biology, Colossal's newly formed non-profit arm, The Colossal Foundation, received $50 million in initial funding and coordinates a global network of conservation partnerships with indigenous groups, governments, and NGOs. Their restoration agenda spans long-horned bison, giant sloths, cave hyenas, moas, saber-toothed cats, woolly rhinoceroses, mastodons, tooth-billed pigeons, and American cheetahs.

In Mauritius, they're clearing invasive species to prepare for the dodo's return. In Tasmania, groundwork proceeds for thylacine reintroduction. Arctic mammoth habitats are being mapped and modeled. Partnerships with Indigenous communities support the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative for bison repatriation and the Nez Perce Tribe's Wolf Conservation Program. Colossal also aids critically endangered species: Sumatran rhinos in Indonesia, Sea of Cortez vaquita porpoises, the Ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas, and the northern white rhino, reduced to two females, using de-extinction techniques for genetic rescue.

"Everything we do is given away to conservation groups for free," Lamm says. "We're subsidizing research and development that no one else is funding."

For Lamm, the mission transcends ecology. "I think synthetic biology is the most important advancement that humans have ever discovered," he says. His vision imagines engineering bioluminescent plants, or trees genetically designed to construct living houses, letting humans inhabit nature rather than dead materials.

The economic stakes are enormous. Forest elephants in Africa provide roughly half a trillion dollars in carbon capture value by knocking down smaller trees and encouraging growth of larger, highly efficient carbon-storing trees. Beavers illustrate the scale: between 50 million and hundreds of millions inhabited North America in the 1600s, managing an estimated 51 million acres of wetlands storing 216 tons of carbon per acre — 7.5 billion tons of total storage. By 1900, beaver populations plummeted to 100,000 acres. By contrast, Orca, Iceland's biggest direct carbon capture plant, sequesters about 4,000 tons annually. "Our biggest carbon capture plant still doesn't hold a candle to a couple of million beavers," Lamm notes.

Critics argue that prioritizing extinct species resurrections while living animals face extinction misses the point. Lamm counters that the technologies developed enable preservation of critically endangered species. The selected species aren't random — they're apex predators whose presence revitalizes degraded ecosystems and transforms them into carbon sinks.

"A lot of people told me how stupid I was," Lamm recalls early on. "'You built five software companies and now you're going to ruin your life and your reputation and people are going to think you're crazy. This is a deep tech science company and you don't know anything about biology.' But my argument was, well, I never knew anything about satellites and I never knew anything about defense. I like to learn new things and to work with much smarter people than me to teach me those things."

The timing question looms. Computer models show that removing Arctic taiga forest and reintroducing cool-tolerant megafauna like woolly mammoths lowers ground temperatures by up to eight degrees. Colossal recently published research suggesting 48,000 mammoths could survive on Alaska's north slope with material carbon capture impact.

"But Colossal Biosciences is not going to be the silver bullet that solves everything because it's going to take quite a long time and quite a bit of money to get those 48,000 mammoths," Lamm admits. "The solution to the permafrost is a combination of both nature-based solutions and technologies. There needs to be a thousand Colossal-like companies working on different innovative ways."

On potential risks from genetic engineering, Lamm emphasizes careful study. "It's really important to look at your intended and unintended consequences," he says. "What's the old phrase? — measure twice, cut once. That's why we're working with indigenous people, governments, ecologists, conservationists, elephant behavioral experts, elephant orphan experts, and migratory experts."

The animals should possess instincts and consciousness similar to their genetic donors since edits target known genome regions coding for instincts. Creatures will be reared in environments preparing them for wilderness, similar to animal orphanage rehabilitation. Colossal works with elephant havens and the International Elephant Foundation that rewild orphaned and baby elephants.

"Unlike a genetically modified small rat or animal that you release into the wild that's hard to monitor, these are thousand-pound-plus animals," he says of potential mammoth hybrids. "So we can monitor them very closely if there are unintended consequences."

When pressed on risks, his tone sharpens. "We also are in a time that requires risk, right? We are losing ecosystems, we are losing species. We are at a time that we have to take risks because what we have been doing doesn't work at the speed and scale that we need it to."

Lamm expects the first hybrid woolly mammoth calves during the next presidential election cycle. Everything Colossal develops "has an impact on conservation," he argues. "Not enough money goes into conservation and very little expertise into new technologies."

He envisions a coming world where biodiversity credits far exceed carbon credits in value. "The intersection of those new economies coupled with new technologies that allow for rapid restoration and rapid species preservation will be the game changer," he believes.

Already, Lamm has shifted the extinction conversation from resignation to possibility. In an era of daily species loss and accelerating climate change, that reframing might constitute his most revolutionary contribution. Whether his gamble succeeds or fails, he's cemented his place in the defining story of our century: the moment humans rejected extinction as inevitable.

Nature-based solutions remain his conviction. "The Paris Agreement says 60% of carbon reduction should be nature-based," he notes. "Yet we throw billions at tech and pennies at nature. That has to change."

Ben Lamm is betting everything on making that shift happen.