Colossal Biosciences, a company working to bring extinct species back to life, has secured $200 million in Series C funding, bringing its total valuation to $10.2 billion, the company announced Wednesday.

The latest funding round was led by TWG Global, a diversified holding company run by Mark Walter and Thomas Tull. Since its founding in September 2021, Colossal has raised $435 million in total funding.

“Our recent successes in creating the technologies necessary for our end-to-end de-extinction toolkit have been met with enthusiasm by the investor community,” said Ben Lamm, CEO and co-founder of Colossal.

The funding and support reflect how much progress the teams have made, Lamm said. People are excited about the innovations and technologies and progress on Colossal’s efforts to revive three extinct species: woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger (thylacine), and dodo.

The Dallas-based company employs more than 170 scientists across facilities in Boston, Dallas, and Melbourne, and Australia. And even as Colossal seeks to expand the species it works on, Lamm doesn’t foresee a huge need for more employees.

“As we get more efficient with the AI models and the genome we don’t need to hire so many more,” Lamm said. “We believe with this capital that we’ll be able to add several new species teams without doubling the size of the company just because of the core infrastructure and technologies that we’ve made.”

Some of the funding raised will be earmarked for additional species work, Lamm said. But those aren’t ready to be announced yet, he said.

“I think we would probably add one or two mammals and then at least one bird species because I I think we want to find efficiencies across these different groups,” Lamm said.

To date, the company’s scientific achievements include generating the first de novo assembled mammoth genome, creating pluripotent stem cells for Asian elephants, and producing the most complete ancient genome to date for the thylacine. The company has also successfully hatched its first chimeric chicks as part of its dodo revival program.

“The woolly mammoth is not going to be a clone of the woolly mammoth. It’s going to be a even better woolly mammoth,” Lamm said. “We’re trying to create mammoth 2.0. We’re making supercharged ones.”

Everything is on track so the mammoth project is on track for late 2028, Lamm said. This year, Lamm expects all three projects to be in the editing phase.

In addition to its three flagship projects of bringing back extinct species, Colossal is biobanking tissue samples and wants to take it to the next level of bio vaulting.

 “It can’t just be us,” Lamm said. “We need academic partners and government partners so we’ve been we’ve been lobbying that pretty hard at the hill.”

With the new funding, Colossal is expanding its work in artificial wombs which could be one of the biggest game changes for conservation of all time, Lamm said.

“Imagine a world where you grow 200 northern white rhinos at the exact same time  without touching an existing animal,” Lamm said. “So it’s great from an animal welfare perspective.”

With the new funds, Colossal is also expanding its AI and algorithm work, Lamm said.

George Church, Colossal co-founder and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, called the company “revolutionary,” saying it is “making science fiction into science fact.”

The funding announcement comes as scientists warn of an accelerating extinction crisis. Current estimates suggest that by 2050, over 50% of the world’s animal species may become extinct, with approximately 27,000 species currently disappearing each year.

In October 2024, Colossal launched a nonprofit foundation to oversee the deployment of its technologies. The foundation currently supports 48 conservation partners globally, including Re:wild, Save The Elephants, and the International Elephant Foundation.

The company’s additional strategic investors include USIT, Animal Capital, Breyer Capital, and notable individuals such as filmmaker Peter Jackson and hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones.

“Countries have been very supportive, and people are very excited about what we’re doing,” Lamm said. “Governments are now reaching out to us around bio vaults. Governments are now reaching out to us saying hey can you help back up our species or can you bring back this national icon to us.”

Colossal’s research can also help humans, Lamm said. It can help with gene editing to deal with genetic mutations to prevent diseases like Sickle Cell Anemia, Lamm said.

“We’re building an incredible company that I would argue is the most advanced genetic engineering and synthetic biology company,” Lamm said. “We’re doing it in Texas.”

“We’re told we are the first Texas Decacorn that was built in Texas,” Lamm said. “ I think that’s incredible, and it shows Texas is such a friendly place to work and such a great community of humans and that we’ll see many more Decacorns and then whatever the next corn is after that.”