The idea of bringing back the Willie Mammoth had been around for a long time. You jump in, take the mantle of CEO. I don’t know if you were expecting to do that. I >> I was going to fund it as a side project at first, but then I thought it was just really interesting. >> So, Colossal is a parent company is spinning out a dozen companies, each of which have massive potential. >> Our first biological products company spun out, which was Franking, which is our plastic degradation company. And so the same system that can bring you a mammoth can also make microbes that can, you know, break the chemical bonds of plastic. I think every company is should be an AI company or is an AI company. Without AI, we would not be able to do anything that we’re doing. >> What Ben is building inside of Colossal being able to design using AI and then build living products. >> Our vision is now. That’s a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen. How do you like having Elon as your warm-up actor? >> Yeah, that’s the greatest thing ever. Yeah. >> Yeah, that’s pretty awesome. So, and he
[00:01:01] he loves Boy Mammoth. >> He does. He does. And he wants Jurassic Park. >> Yeah. He’s not alone. >> He’s not alone. >> I’m not saying that’s for me. I’m just saying that he’s >> not alone. >> I understand that. >> The number one request we get. >> Yes. >> Yeah. And then megalodons is too, which is also really weird. >> Well, megalodons are just cool. I mean, they they littered their teeth all over the ocean floor. >> They’re still scary. >> They’re scary. Jaws >> scared enough the ocean without it. >> Jaws times 100. So, as we’re going along here, please use your uh Slido app to add questions. So, I want first of all, I’ve known you now since pretty much the beginning of Colossal. >> Yeah. You were like first text. >> First, second text. Yeah. And I uh am such a fan of you as a CEO first and foremost and then second the company. The idea of bringing back the woolly mammoth had been around for a long time. Um it had been played around in nonprofits and so forth. Uh I’m going to summarize this man meets George Church,
[00:02:01] one of the greatest, you know, synthetic biologists, crisper gene editor, entrepreneur, professor at Harvard Medical School. And and you ask him what’s your favorite pet project? >> Yeah. I asked him if he had one project, if he could uh work on one project for the rest of time with unlimited capital, what would it be? He and he didn’t hesitate. Like it wasn’t like, “Let me think about it. Let me get back to you.” Uh and it was just instantly he’s like, “I’d worked to bring back mammoths. I’d rews and I’d built technologies that could be applied to saving species and also human healthcare.” Like he he just didn’t hesitate. >> So you jump in. Uh you take the mantle of CEO. I don’t know if you were expecting to do that. I I was going to fund it as a side project at first, but then I thought it was just really interesting. >> You build a company which goes from zero to$10 billion valuation in 4 years. >> It it’s massively undervalued. I I totally agree with you. >> Yeah, I love you. Um and it’s just it’s it’s you as the CEO who has done this.
[00:03:01] You’ve built an extraordinary team. How big is the Thank you so much, Val. How big is the team now? >> Uh we have 260 scientists. uh 200 here in the US and 60 in Australia >> and uh a significant number of AI programmers. Exactly. >> You become an AI company. >> Yeah. Yeah. We I think every company is should be an AI company or is an AI company. Uh so we feel like the synthetic biology part of our work is really interesting. So we don’t so we don’t always like lead with AI, but AI without AI, we would not be able to do anything that we’re doing. >> Um I want you to think about this. What Ben is building inside of Colossal is a platform and an engine for creating living products, being able to design using AI and then build living products. Let’s talk about the work you’re doing in in the extinction. >> Yeah. So uh we thought that if we’re going to go build this end to-end pipeline for synthetic biology and you we would have to develop technologies
[00:04:01] across computational biology, cellular engineering, genetic engineering, uh cloning, sematic cellular transfer and and others eventually artificial wombs. Uh and we thought that if we’re going to do that and build this endto-end platform, what’s the best way to do it? And we thought well if you start with the extinction right because we are facing a massive extinction crisis right now uh and and if we do that we are going to have to solve some of the hardest problems in biology genotype to phenotype relationships uh ancestral shape reconstructions comparative genomics. So there’s so many things that we have to solve and and in that allows us to build a system model that could be applied to all types of solutions for biological products. um you know our first biological products company spun out which was breaking which is our plastic degradation company and so the same system that can bring you a mammoth can also make microbes that can you know break the chemical bonds of plastics >> so it so colossal as a parent company is spinning out a dozen companies each of which have massive potential I’ll we’ll
[00:05:01] talk about a couple of them here a couple of them are are super top secret we can’t discuss but they’re as big or bigger so breaking is one so you guys all the microplastic issue, right? That we have like 5 g of of of plastic in our brain the size of a plastic teaspoon or credit card. And most of that 90% is absorbed through your gut. Some of it comes through your skin and and and such. But what breaking has done uh is is what? Yeah, we was there there’s actually we we originally thought the original thought was that they had discovered an enzyme from a microbe but after further analysis we took this discovery at the Vis institute put it in colossal started to really understand it and actually it’s a concert of microbes working together which we were able which was actually even better for us because we were able to essentially understand the enzymes that were being made. We’re also understanding the ability to edit each one of the microbes to make different variants of the enzymes to hit different types of plastics. And you know, the the plastic
[00:06:01] crisis that we’re in is terrible, not only for human healthcare, but the oceans and and many parts of the environment and others that it’s now affecting. But what’s interesting is that most uh plastic treatment and degradation companies are just making smaller plastics. They’re just making smaller microlastics and that’s not solving the problem in any capacity, right? And so for us, you know, if we just made a company that made smaller plastics, we didn’t think that’s the right thing. And if we just found designed a company that could uh where the chemical process to pre-treat the plastic is worse than the plastic, that was also a bad thing. And so what’s interesting about this discovery is it actually breaks the chemical bonds of the plastic. And so we were able to use directed evolution and supercharge it using our pipeline uh and some of our editing tools so that not only does it have a larger breath of plastics it can break down but uh it also breaks them down at a much faster rate per surface area. And we are starting to look at the human body and and >> so I find this fascinating. Imagine a supplement you could take
[00:07:00] >> that actually breaks down the bonds of the microplastics in your gut before it gets absorbed. >> Yeah. Because the plastic problem is a global problem. Yeah. And it’s and it’s not just a problem in the environment and it’s in our food supply. It’s in our reproductive tissues across the bloodb brain barrier in some cases. So it it is a pretty big existential problem that we have to solve. Um and so you’re not going to have like, you know, one solution to rule them all. You’ve got to have a myriad of different solutions. And that’s really the goal of of of of breaking is is is how do we break down and get rid of plastics um you know in the world. >> So uh when you’re how many how many species are you working on bringing back? >> Uh so so publicly we’ve announced uh the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo, and the moa. And then we’ve we’ve made the direwolves. Uh we we will have more direwolves coming which we have announced. >> By the way, I’m just going to let’s get the images in the back over here. Here’s the William mice. how cute they are. >> Yeah, they are they are they are
[00:08:00] objectively the cutest mice >> on the planet. >> And >> yeah, >> the woolly mammoth. >> Yep. >> Um >> those look good. Yeah. >> And uh the the direwolf. >> Yeah. So that’s uh Ramulus in in the front and Remis in the back. And that and that’s George R. Martin, which is great. So, we did that was actually one of the fun like there’s a lot of cool stuff that we get to work on, but one of the cool things is that like you know I think kids of all ages like whether you’re like you know three or you’re you’re older. Uh George R. Martin um we did a Zoom with him and and I and I I we got introduced to him and obviously if you don’t know George R. Martin he he created wrote a song of ice and fire and he did um uh which became game of thrones which popularized uh direwolves. Most people thought direwolves were just mythical creatures, including some members of the the Game of Thrones cast, which I won’t I won’t call them out, but uh but they did. And what’s interesting though is um you know, when we you know,
[00:09:00] I got introduced to George and we put him on Zoom and I just I just let me just show you something. I showed him to him and he just teared up. He’s like this is like he he knew exactly what it was, right? He he knew it wasn’t a mythical creature. So, it was a it was a pretty cool thing to show that we could take a 73,000y old skull um and make puppies uh through and we did it in 18 months, which is pretty remarkable. >> It’s extraordinary. So, the deextinction business, people don’t, you know, I didn’t think of it as a massive revenue opportunity when I began. What’s the business case in this and how big I mean, EY did an estimate of the size of the market for you? Can you >> Yeah, they they they said through educational content and uh changing uh uh STEM related content in in in education as well as looking at um uh the kind of ancillary effects and they look at like where people are are if you could take dollars and and these would be net new dollars. They wouldn’t be taking away from anything. But if you take net new dollars that are comparable
[00:10:00] to things that are extinct, but layer on education, the world spends about 12 and a half uh percent uh 12 and a half% of global consumers buy something that’s extinct every year. Like and so turns out to be like $1.7 trillion. So um which is which is really interesting. And so part of our model and part of our thought process is on the the the deextinction work is not only to subsidize the platform uh but to help countries uh do it which is pretty interesting and we’re helping them preserve their species which actually is a quite lucrative business model as well as helping from an educational perspective and um you know it’s so far the feedback’s been phenomenal. So, just to just to land that plane, um you just came back a month ago from Dubai >> and announced a few major deals there. >> Yeah. >> Um can you say what those were? >> Yeah. So, we announced the world’s first Biovault. There’s not the equivalent of the Bioault in uh for animals as there are for plants, right? You’ve got a lot
[00:11:00] of fragmentation. You’ve got incredible people and nonprofits and zoos and others working on bio banking, meaning they’re saving individual little pieces of cells and whatnot. But, you know, when I naively started this business, I came from software. So, I thought, oh, we’ll just plug into the GCP of species, which doesn’t exist. Um, so we had to go, we had to go build reference genomes for every single species that we work on. And then we said, this should be more of a global project. Uh, individual countries should have stakeholdership from it. So we partnered with the UAE as our first partner. U there’s incredibly uh diverse uh fauna in in in in the region that that that is uh much of which is is is going extinct. So we need to protect it and then we also need to sequence it and and build digital backups and also ensure that that’s shared with the global scientific community and that should be subsidized by governments right and they should take uh I think we did a over about a year we did a good job educating them on the importance of biodiversity why you need to protect biodiversity why it’s so so important from for for national uh
[00:12:01] pride as well as techn as well as the impacts from the data from from these animals and so so if you don’t like you should do it because if you like ecosystems if you don’t ES ecosystems, you should do it because you like animals. If you don’t like animals, you should do it because the applications could be helpful to humans. And if you don’t like humans, then you’re probably not the right fit for us to talk to. But um but but but fundamentally uh we got them to say agree to to to put hundreds of millions of dollars into uh the world’s first bio and instead of also doing it in you know some secret uh backroom you know cave or underground thing and there’s still redundancy models around that but do it like in a hightraic area. uh if you’re going to spend X dollar, spend X plus Y and and wrap educational content around it, you know, make it available for kids and whatnot, which they did, which they agreed to, which is great. And then and then from that, we’re building a living lab. And so, you know, it’s a nine figure initiative for us. It’s a nine figure initiative for uh the country. And um you know I think uh you know it
[00:13:01] also builds capabilities in country for countries to also uh protect their biodiversity in in a completely new way while also sharing globally uh the data. >> Yeah. So the way I think about this is countries are your customer for um saving their endangered species >> uh for and eventually it’ll be productionized like once we are successful with artificial wombs. >> Yeah. You’re you’re just pasly. So the other thing that they’re doing besides breaking is they’re giving birth, excuse the pun, to an artificial womb company so that these mammals and these birds can actually give birth exut, right? So imagine a future uh in which and and speak about you have three of these projects going on. >> Yeah. Yeah. So we have we have three uh they don’t work yet but we have three moon we have three mini moonshots within our big moonshot right uh of of artificial wombs for different animal cades. And you know our vision is using
[00:14:02] biioanking using synthetic biology using automation and and uh robotic process automation with assistance from AI and computer vision uh and artificial wombs we could productionize species development. And so when you have small and when you have genetic bottleneck around a certain species or you have long gestation like with the northern everyone knows about the northern white rhino, right? A lot of people at least know about it. There’s two females left. They’re functionally extinct. Uh there’s low there’s low diversity in them. There’s a bottleneck because they’re related. Uh and there are 18 embryos are related. But if you can engineer in genetic diversity from that uh both synthetically and from from lost specimens and then productionize it through artificial wounds, the $25 million that people are spending a year keeping two animals alive, you know, you could use a piece of that to productionize it and then the rest of that could go to, you know, water education, other things for the country, right? And so um so I really do think that productionizing endangered species
[00:15:01] and uh also helping species adapt at the same curve of which we are changing environments is also something that’s going to be needed in the future because evolution is not uh fast unless it’s directed. >> Um you also purchased the world’s top two clothing companies. >> Yes. >> I love that. >> Yeah. >> You you you forget that you just happen to buy. >> Yeah. I know. So, so most people think of cloning and they’re like, I think I’ve read something about a celebrity cloning their dog, right? Uh, and and and we did clone Tom Brady’s dog, so I think we’re part of that. >> Tom Tom Brady’s an investor along. >> So, we did so we did we do we do kind of like push that narrative to people because it’s true. Um, so I guess we’re part of the problem of when people think about it. But what’s interesting is that only like 18 species have ever been cloned and 15 of those have been cloned by the company Vioagen that that we the main one that we bought. We bought another one and most cloning efficiencies and I think this is really important. Most cloning efficiencies is only about 2%. And in Viagen was at 78%.
[00:16:03] Pretty consistently uh which is amazing, right? And so the only endangered species that have ever been cloned on the planet were cloned by Vioagen, right? Uh and so uh things like the blackfooted ferret and others that uh you know are are going extinct, Viagen took old cells and were able to reanimate them and then clone them. And so I think that you know for we people still love their dogs and nothing negative about dog cloning. I I people I get asked if I would clone my dogs. They’re muts so I’d probably save more but I don’t know maybe I’d clone them because I love them. But um but but so so we’re not taking away the cloning business for consumers. So people love that business. It’s a profitable business. We’re still supporting that business. But then separately, we’re now taking those technologies into country and helping uh uh not just productionize with artificial wounds, but productionize cloning of of critically endangered species. We have some big announcements this year with the with a with a local government on it.
[00:17:00] >> Okay. So I want you to think about uh the pipeline, the platform that Colossal is is being able to use AI and synthetic biology to say we want this phenotype, these genes, these gene copies. You know, I was in a conversation with one of your scientists saying, yes, we’re going to a Tusk conference, right? I was like, what? And being able to understand, okay, we want we want the snout to be longer. We want the teeth to be longer. uh and being able to use AI to to change which genes, which enhancer sequences and and be able to like design the living animal that you want, which is why I said, you know, someone asked you, could you create Pikachu, and you said, yeah, we could probably create Pikachu. I I did get asked I I got asked that is like the first question on at South by Southwest a few years and then the rest of the entire panel was about Pokemon >> which which I was really hopeful to talk about like our vaccine development for elephants and others but it was mostly
[00:18:00] about Pokemon. >> Oh my god. Yeah. >> But what I find fascinating is if you can engineer life that way, uh the missions that the companies that are being built and spun out include uh company that can create disease resistant plants or drought resistant plants. >> Plants and animals are something that we’re >> disease resistant animals. We’re we’re spending a lot of time on it because, you know, um leading extinction rates are not just human caused, but some of them are uh supercharged by humans, but they’re they’re existing in nature like diseases. And we get this, you know, a project that I’m very passionate about that we’re working on is kitrid. And most people have never heard of kitrid. It’s the leading extinction driver right now on the planet in frogs and and and amphibians. they’re not fluffy, so they don’t get as much attention, but um and but but it it’s it’s terrible for ecosystems, but it’s something that we can solve with genetic engineering, right? And so for us, uh you know, and not only can we solve the current problem, but we can also create kit
[00:19:00] frogs and salamanders and others in in and that are kitrred resistance, which have huge applications. Same thing, you know, we’re not currently working on corals after dinosaurs. It’s it’s like dinosaurs, corals, and then I guess Pokémon. uh dinosaurs, corals, dragons, Pokemon. Everyone’s really excited about dragons and um and so uh we aren’t working on dragons and we’re not working on Pokemon or corals yet. Um and so yeah, we had a lot of requests. Um uh but but but the coral side is really fascinating and it applies directly to this idea of animals and plants. We we have an entire group now that’s focusing on how do you apply some of the like what are some of the biggest issues from livestock to you know critically endangered species what are commonalities around these vaccines what are commonalities around what can be developed to to infer resistance right and you know part of it it’s also amazing because you know most people think about colossal they only think about the mammoth they only think about the extinction they don’t think about the platform like you’ve talked about which I’m really appreciative that someone’s talking about the larger
[00:20:00] synthetic platform and bio uh system that we’re building. But then also people don’t really think about kind of like what the ripples effects on society are and and you know we don’t want to live in a nonbiodiverse in uh ecosystem and and environment and we don’t want to live in a world where we are changing it faster than nature can um catch up. And you know, I I think that synthetic biology, especially paired with AI, will be, you know, and I’m sure others in other industries will disagree with this, but I believe it will be the most transformative technology we as humanity ever has. >> Yeah. It’s it, you know, you think of AI as a multi multi-t trillion dollar hundred trillion dollar market. >> That’s that’s why I think we’re massively undervalued. >> Yeah. Synthetic biology enabled by powered by AI is as big a diverse market. I mean, how big is the market for uh you know, engineering disease resistant plants uh and droughtresistant plants and animals? >> Yeah. I mean, it it’s hundreds of billions today and that’s and it’s just
[00:21:00] not well tracked, right? But if you look at everything that can be applied and what the what the current rate is, you have a a a terrible like a swine flu or a a uh bird flu or whatnot that wipes out a population, you’ve got so many precautions that also go into these, right? When we roll it, when we brought back the direwolves, we got some feedback that are like, “Oh, people don’t like wolves because they’re going to go kill the cattle.” It’s like, “The way we raise cattle, the wolves aren’t going near it.” Like, it’s gross. Um, and so, uh, it just is. It just actually is. And so, I it’s just gross. And so, uh, what’s interesting though is, uh, if I think that we with with certain, we do that because of how we’ve had inbreeding and hybridization and all this over time. I think that if we’re smarter about this um and and we also have the opportunity to educate governments on things like GMOs, right? Because for a while there was this anti-GMO genetically modified organism movement, right? Because people thought, oh, it’s going to change your genome and then you’re going to if you eat GMO corn,
[00:22:01] you’re going to like I don’t know what they thought. >> I mean, I had this conversation with Rob Sik on on Zoom earlier today that you know GMOs have saved so many lives they’ve taken nobody. >> But is it is it an educational moment, right? It’s like it like you know there was a season when seat belts were scary for people. There was there was literally a time where like cars were like, “No, we can’t put seat belts in cars because it’s going to make people think cars are bad or or that cars are dangerous.” Like, well, cars are dangerous, right? And so, it’s an opportunity to educate, right? And so, we get that and and if you go look at like, you know, when we were meeting with the Australian government about reintroducing the Tasmanian tiger because all the species that we’re working on, we want to work to re reintroduce, you know, their law technically that Tasmanian tigers are GMOs and so they are genetically modified organisms, right? even if they’re 100% genetically identical, they’re an amalgamation of 53 different Tasmanian tigers over the course of about 300 years. And so what’s interesting about that is they’re still GMOs. And so for us, uh, we had to then
[00:23:00] educate the Australian government like you can’t just have an anti-GMO, uh, uh, narrative as it relates to, uh, uh, the Tasmanian tiger because then you can’t rewcred species back into your country because you see it as what you were afraid of in the 80s. >> Uh, there’s another, dare I say, multi-t trillion dollar market you’re working on. Uh, GAN drives. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Once again, chain drives is a 40% technology problem, 60% marketing problem. >> Yeah. Can you describe uh what it is, uh who the customer is and how big it is? >> So, so the invasive species uh problem, it’s global problem. It’s about $5.4 trillion. It’s currently measured. I think it’s much larger than that. Uh because I don’t think it’s it’s hard to truly quantify. But as the world gets smaller from a commerce perspective, uh invasive species are just more uh prevalent, right? And that that’s everything from what we’re seeing uh you
[00:24:01] know in Australia with the cane toad, cats, even carps in Australia, like invasive carpet. That sounds weird. I don’t know who put them there, but they shouldn’t be there. Um and then uh and people talk about mosquitoes, but but what we’re seeing right now in the US and a big problem coming to us, Texas has just declared it as as a national emergency uh is the screworm. It’s a It’s coming up through Honduras and Mexico. It’s now in southern Texas. Uh it it is going to decimate our cattle and and bison industry. Um and so you’re how do you combat that, right? And so the best way to combat that was you kind of have a couple choices. You can create vaccines and and try to do different things to to the animals themselves, but then that goes directly into USDA and you’ve got to work through that. And there’s the anti- some anti-GMO movement still that persists from an education perspective. Um but then separately uh an idea that you could create genetically modified screworms and release them so that as the next generation uh are produced, they’re all
[00:25:00] male. Uh and so you over time know how much they love each other. They’re not going to make more. Um they don’t have the same technologies that human humanity has uh and disposal and opposable thumb. So they so they uh they’re going to go out. They’re going to die out, right? And so so there’s people, this is terrible, but this it’s true. In New Zealand, in Australia, in parts of Africa, people are killing animals because they’re invasive species. They’re killing cats. They’re killing possums. They’re killing these the these because they’re decimating their local population of small marills in Australia or like birds in in New Zealand. And you know, that’s a that’s an animal welfare nightmare. That’s a that’s a you know, social nightmare. like who wants to be, you know, because people care more about cats than screworms. Um, and so if you uh but if you engineer the right gene drives into them and create the right bio control around them, you can have animals and including insects live out their normal lives and then over time you have a
[00:26:00] decre decrease in that population humanely. And so, you know, people released gene drives in Africa around uh mosquitoes and everyone freaked out and then they stopped it because they thought, you know, oh no, it’s bad. Um, but mosquitoes are a part of the food web. I don’t think it was necessarily a bad idea to stop it because they were part of the food web, but we know invasive species are not a part of the food web because because of the word invasive. And so, um, so yeah. So, so, uh, it’s a huge problem. We’re working with our government and we’re working with, uh, international governments on it. But that’s the that’s the magic of of AI combined with uh synthetic biology two years ago if you said would you work you know should you be working on bio control and bioontainment and gene drives uh I I would have said well it didn’t really work with I didn’t really get into it because I would have I would have thought it didn’t really work when it was distributed around mosquitoes but you know now it’s a $5 trillion problem right and and there’s not we we have an interesting model to it and some proprietary technologies that makes it
[00:27:00] you know safer than has ever been dispersed in the wild and also we have the ability to roll it back uh which is which is helpful. >> How how big is that marketplace? How big how big is the spend on going after invasive species? >> US is over 500 billion a year. So in in in the in the economic impact the spin in in just just domestically ju just but I don’t know off the top of my head what the spend against it is because the the way that it’s mostly uh combed even is with everything from poisons like literally poisons like they literally poison the environment as a way to get rid of the invasive disease like you know it’s it’s like archaic ways of treating cancer right and versus what what we know is here and what is coming. Um it’s the same thing is what people are doing in the with the environment. So poison is one and then uh for specifically larger animals they’re killing them, poisoning them, trapping them and it’s it’s pretty non-humane. >> Yeah. I I just want you to understand
[00:28:00] how huge this opportunity is. Uh you know dozens of deserts of species to be attacked and cost dozens >> and none of the people are focusing. I mean the good news is compute power, AI, anthropomorphic robots and others people are really focusing on which is great. I still think like if you go ask like 90% of people that are fluent in synthetic biology and think about genome engineering I’d say 99% of them will focus only on human healthcare which is great right but I’d say that’s 99%. But the same technologies apply to other use cases I think are even larger economically but also have a bigger opportunity to help us. You’re focused on creating healthier embryos, reinventing IVF, uh advanced gene editing technologies. I mean these are all sort of spinouts that are coming out from this engine that you’ve
[00:29:01] created. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, so our artificial wounds don’t work yet. Um, just full disclosure. Um, and we have three projects around that. But what we found is that like, you know, as you break some of these problems down from a first principles perspective and you look at kind of like how would you rethink it, how would you start? And what’s interesting is like we are keeping like you know I I’ve got kids now and uh they’re great and uh um and we went through the IVF process and you know it’s a it’s weird and crazy and it’s archaic and it’s emotional and then like this thing that’s so precious you like look at it from like this archaic like grading scale right like this morphological grading scale and it’s like that’s that’s how we’re choosing these things. It’s crazy, right? I think it’s crazy. I think it’s very archaic versus where technology currently is. Um, and so, so what’s interesting is like for us to be successful even long term with our mamillbased artificial wounds is about nine different there’s
[00:30:00] four core but nine different core placental types. Um, we have to innovate in a couple of different categories and one of those is just keeping embryos healthier longer, right? And if you look at like how current modern day IVF clinics work, they’ve been doing it the same way a long time, right? And what’s interesting about that is that um if you look at the uh you look at the data, it’s just based on this morphological grade. And what we found is that uh sometimes embryos that are day two that or day three or day five in non-model species uh and in some model species like like mice uh they they aren’t uh they they they look like they’re not they wouldn’t be the winner of the race uh morphologically at that stage where most humans make their decision. But if you go a little bit longer, they actually are the healthiest embryo, which is kind of crazy, right? So we’re we as humans are making this decision on the probably one of the most important things in our lives. You go through IVF with this archaic old system based on this one moment in time and uh uh bad
[00:31:02] imaging to say the least. So you do that, but but what we found is that you know things will speed up and things will slow down at these different stages. So even for us to be successful in artificial womb, we had to build a hydrogel and micrfluidics device that actually makes the embryos healthier. And we’ve actually been able to take embryos in non-model species much further than anyone else has in the world in both mice and as well as in non-model species. Um, and it’s a lot easier to do it in humans. We’re not we don’t do it in humans, but that same technology could be applied to uh embryos. And we have a slightly different grading scale that that is proving way more efficient and way more more importantly way more accurate in both model and non-model species. And that uh that just so just that little innovation I think could be pretty transformative to IVF. >> You know pal um I I I I want to take us to a close here but give me a sense of how fast this field is moving. uh you
[00:32:03] know what you know the transformations you’ve experienced over the year or two uh and as far as I know there is no other company out there that’s even close to what you have built in terms of production pipeline >> yes so obviously I’m biased um disclosure but I I am too >> yeah we’re both biased but but I will say objectively two years ago three years ago we were doing victory laps when we did a couple edits and I think that’s where most people are doing it. We’re now doing hundreds of edits at a time. Uh and when we were doing a couple edits, we were getting like 40% efficiency and we’re like, that’s pretty good. Most people are doing 15. We’re we’re really smart. Um but then now we’re doing uh hundreds of edits at 90% efficiency. I think in the coming years that’s thousands of edits, and those are those are not linear repeats, meaning they’re all over the genome. They’re completely um uh and they’re very precise uh to the point that um I would
[00:33:02] feel comfortable that that technology could be applied to human healthcare. We’re not going to do it. We’d spin it out or license it, right? Because we are pretty myopically focused on biodiversity and deextinction at at the core. Um but uh no, no one’s near that. No, no one’s even near that. But even two years ago, we thought we were by far the best uh based on every single standard, which was interesting. I will say that um what we’re finding also from DNA synthesis we’ve now put in at least from what we unless there’s secrets something we haven’t seen uh based on research and based on was published and a lot of scientists love to take the victory labs pretty early in in the in the journals um so based on what we’ve seen uh you know we we’ve surpassed the largest delivery by 5x already um I think that’s we’ll be at 20x before the end of this year and so the DNA synthesis large heart rate delivery and the clustering models that we have are um you know in very superior but at the same time I do think that you know uh I
[00:34:02] think the part of the reason for that though is because we have taken a product and systems model approach to synthetic biology leveraging AI whereas most people are trying to solve one-off point solutions for human healthcare so they have different goals so I can understand why they have different ambition levels but for us to to to be able to to understand genotype to phenotype expression and being able to do it all over the genome. Um it’s just a different set of challenges. But but I think I I I do think in the coming years that um you know hopefully the models that we are applying and the way we’re thinking about it applies broader to synthetic biology >> and you’re taking these capabilities and spinning out companies. uh >> we we want to stay very focused and so like we’re opportunists and we’re capitalists but at the same time we think these tech these some of these problems are very hard um and we want dedicated teams on them right and so the extinction species preservation we think
[00:35:00] it’s a you know $10 trillion opportunity but we think it’s also one of the most important things to focus on and we think it’s solving the hardest things in biology but if we say oh we get a great discovery on plastics and we could spend some resources on it then we we invent that here and then we spin it out and we put incredible women and men to then go work on that, right? And and we bring in the right capital and attention to it. It’s a part of the ecosystem. We build intercomp agreements where we share the editing efficiencies and whatnot that we develop so it can help them. Uh so so it is a really interesting ecosystem of how we approach this. But um you know fundamentally you know I don’t ever want to spread ourselves too thin. I want to focus on the platform, focus on biodiversity and deextinction, but then these, you know, bring in women and men that then can go run those. But they’re typically seated by us with the the scientific team internally that built it.