Colossal Biosciences, a company working to bring extinct animals back to life, is in talks to raise new funding at a valuation between $20 billion and $30 billion, according to a report by Axios cited by TechCrunch. The Dallas-based company, co-founded by CEO Ben Lamm, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither the round's lead investor nor the amount being raised has been disclosed.

A valuation is how much investors think a company is worth. The reported range would be roughly double to triple what Colossal was worth in January 2025, when it was valued at $10.2 billion after raising $200 million in a round led by TWG Global. That brought total funding to $435 million since the company launched in September 2021 with a $15 million seed round. In September 2025, Colossal raised another $120 million, pushing total funding to $555 million and its valuation to $10.3 billion, per the company's own announcement. The UAE separately invested $60 million, according to Wired as cited by TechCrunch.

Colossal is about five years old. Going from a $15 million starting round to a possible $20–30 billion valuation in that time places it among the fastest-rising biotech valuations on record, though the talks are not yet finalized.

Axios reported that Colossal has started generating revenue over the last year. The company has spun off three startups: Breaking (which breaks down plastics), Form Bio (a software platform for biological research, which secured $30 million in funding), and Astromech (which uses AI to make predictions in biology and life sciences), the latter valued at $2 billion as of March 2026 per D Magazine. Colossal also plans to spin off its artificial animal womb technology, which Lamm told Rolling Stone in May is expected to be ready next year and could have applications for human fertility treatment.

Colossal has offered its conservation technology to the U.S. government and the UAE. It may eventually earn revenue through the sale of biodiversity credits — essentially certificates that represent a positive environmental outcome — if it reintroduces extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth and dodo bird to their native habitats.

The company's list of de-extinction targets has grown since launch. Colossal added the dodo bird in January 2023, when the company was valued at over $1 billion per Bloomberg. In April 2025, the company announced a breakthrough in resurrecting the dire wolf, Bloomberg reported. A male animal produced by Colossal was born on October 1, 2024, and was featured in Reuters' "Pictures of the Day" on April 9, 2025, when the animal was five months old. The company aims to produce a woolly mammoth by 2028.

The broader context is that a $20–30 billion valuation for a company that has not yet commercialized its core work is the kind of number that invites scrutiny. The revenue detail from Axios matters here: Colossal is not yet making money from resurrected species or biodiversity credits, and the 2028 mammoth target remains years away. What the company does have is a set of spinoffs that are attracting their own funding, an artificial womb technology nearing readiness, and interest from a sovereign government in the UAE. The valuation seems to reflect the value of all these technologies together rather than a single product.

In my view, it is unusual for a company this young, in a field with no track record of commercial success, to command a figure in this range. The closest comparison may not be another biotech company but the AI startups that achieved very high valuations based on the potential of their technology rather than proven revenue. Colossal is making a similar case: that its work on de-extinction is producing new technologies, each capable of attracting its own investment, while the main mission continues. Whether investors at $20–30 billion are buying that argument or simply investing because the opportunity is rare is a question the round's eventual details may answer.

For now, the talks are just that. No lead investor, no check size, no close date. What is clear is that Colossal has moved from a far-fetched idea to a company that governments, venture capitalists, and strategic buyers are all engaging with on financial terms that would have been unthinkable at its 2021 launch.