Analysis
Colossal Biosciences is reportedly in talks to raise new capital at a valuation of $20 billion to $30 billion, according to TechCrunch -- up to triple the $10.2 billion the company was worth in January 2025. It's not yet clear who is leading the new round or precisely how much the five-year-old company is targeting to raise, but the valuation range alone marks a significant re-rating for a company whose headline mission -- bringing back extinct species like the woolly mammoth and dire wolf -- hasn't yet produced a single de-extincted animal.
What's changed is the business built around that mission. Colossal has started generating real revenue over the past year by spinning out standalone companies built on technology developed for its core science: Breaking, which uses engineered organisms to break down plastics; Form Bio, a computational biology platform that itself raised $30 million in independent funding; and Astromech, an AI-driven predictive modeling company for biology and life sciences that was valued at $2 billion in its own funding round in March.
That spinout strategy is effectively what's being repriced. Investors aren't valuing Colossal at $20-30 billion purely as a bet on de-extinction science delivering a live mammoth calf -- they're valuing it as a platform company whose underlying genomic engineering and AI-modeling capabilities have already spun off multiple businesses with independent revenue and their own outside funding rounds.
The core science keeps expanding too: Colossal added the bluebuck antelope, an extinct South African species, as its sixth de-extinction target in late April, and its nonprofit conservation arm struck a partnership with the University of Tasmania to help protect Tasmanian devils from a contagious facial cancer -- work that generates conservation-sector credibility and government/NGO relationships alongside the more speculative headline science.
What to watch: whether the new round actually closes at the reported $20-30 billion range, and whether any of Colossal's de-extinction targets reach a live-birth milestone that would validate the core science underpinning the entire platform's valuation.
