Moonshots EP 165: Why This Billionaire Is Bringing Back the Dire Wolf, Woolly Mammoth & More

Summary

Peter Diamandis interviews Ben Lamm, founder/CEO of Colossal Biosciences ($10.2B valuation in four years), alongside Salim Ismail. The episode centers on Colossal’s successful creation of three dire wolf pups using ancient DNA from a 72,000-year-old skull and 13,000-year-old tooth. Lamm walks through the full de-extinction pipeline: sequencing ancient DNA with sufficient coverage (13x reads), comparing to the closest living relative (grey wolves, 99.5% genetic match), identifying phenotype-driving genes in coding and regulatory regions, engineering edits into grey wolf cells via multiplex CRISPR (20 edits simultaneously with zero off-target effects), then somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning) into a surrogate. Colossal also cloned four red wolves — the most critically endangered wolf on Earth with only 15 left in the wild — using a new non-invasive cloning technique, which received almost no media coverage.

Lamm recounts the chaotic launch week: The New Yorker broke the embargo a day early, the website had placeholder text live, Reddit banned all Colossal mentions for a week, and a cabinet meeting comment about the Endangered Species Act was misinterpreted as using de-extinction to remove protections. Despite the noise, the bioarchive paper became the platform’s number one paper and crashed the server on upload. The broader roadmap includes woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, and dodo. Lamm projects the world’s first fully ex-utero mammal birth (artificial womb) by end of 2026. Salim frames the achievement as a paradigm shift in conservation, noting this provides entirely new tools the field has never had. Diamandis emphasizes the “moonshot CEO” archetype: Lamm has zero biology background but brought beginner’s-mind persistence and systems thinking from software to orchestrate a team across 31 classification frameworks and decades of theoretical work into a four-year execution.

Key Segments

• [00:00-02:00] Cold open and introduction; Diamandis calls the dire wolf the “scientific miracle of the decade”
• [02:00-08:00] Lamm on media controversy, academic backlash over species classification, red wolf cloning overlooked
• [08:00-12:00] Chaotic launch week: broken embargo, Reddit ban, cabinet meeting misinterpretation
• [12:00-18:00] The 50-year horizon mindset; Colossal’s $10.2B valuation in four years
• [18:00-26:00] De-extinction 101: ancient DNA sequencing, coverage, closest living relatives, multiplex gene editing, SCNT cloning

Notable Claims

• Colossal achieved 20 simultaneous gene edits with 100% delivery, 100% efficiency, and zero off-target effects
• Oldest ancient DNA Colossal works with is a 1.2-million-year-old steppe mammoth genome
• Dire wolves and grey wolves share 99.5% genetic similarity
• Only 15 red wolves remain in the wild; Colossal cloned four using a new non-invasive technique
• Lamm projects the first fully ex-utero mammal birth by end of 2026
• No centralized bio-vault or genome sequencing repository exists for species conservation; Colossal is advocating the federal government to create one

Bias/Sponsor Notes

Diamandis is a seed investor and advisor to Colossal Biosciences — disclosed on-air. The episode is essentially a founder profile with minimal pushback on claims. Abundance Summit promotion mid-episode.