I like imagining what ambitious companies plan for themselves and what the private investor pitches are like behind closed doors. Does Elon Musk just want to go to Mars for the sake of humanity, or to control the future nation-planet-state of Mars, competing with Earth for power in the solar system? Does Meta want us to simply play in the metaverse, or for us to upload a la Pantheon and keep us as customers, workers, and citizens? Do these moonshot ideas make it into slide decks? Surely they must have been considered, as founders tend to think big.

This line of thinking about grand, unstated ambitions brings me to a company I've been following closely: Colossal Biosciences. Colossal Biosciences is a biotechnology company on a mission to bring back extinct animals. One of its most famous pitches is reintroducing the woolly mammoth to Siberia to stomp down the permafrost, keeping that massive source of greenhouse gasses frozen. Since the new US administration came to power and subsequent culture shift, we hear less about the climate change angle and more about “preserving species through de-extinction.” They even got a shoutout from the Department of the Interior on X. This sends the worrying message “Go ahead and disregard changing climates killing off endangered species. It's ok, we can just bring back the animals later.”

But what if de-extinction is just the public-facing mission for a near term business case? After learning more about the company, I’ve devised a hypothesized roadmap for what Colossal might really be building over the next 50 years.

Present (next 5 years): Building the Toolbox

As with many biotech companies with high aspirations and limitless funding, the first many years of Colossal will probably be some not so flashy R&D and some flashier engineered species that they show off to the media. During this time, they will develop many different molecular, software, and robotic technologies that are necessary for accelerating their research. These tools won't just be for mammoths, but will also apply to many different research efforts and spun out into their own companies. This is already happening, with spin outs including software company Form Bio and plastic degradation company Breaking, and will continue to happen. The founder and CEO, Ben Lamm, is a billionaire serial entrepreneur, and sees opportunity everywhere.

Two key areas ripe for spin-offs will be gene editing and computational biology.

To make the large-scale genomic changes needed to revive an extinct phenotype, Colossal must engineer novel gene editors. They need tools that can replace or insert huge pieces of DNA and make many small, parallel edits with high efficiency. While these editors don’t need to be extremely specific (as human gene editors need to be), as they can just screen out undesired mutants, they do need to be good at multiplexing, so a large number of edits can be made simultaneously. In fact, Ben Lamm has already said that they have discovered a gene editor that has a very low rate of off-target effects, and is able to be multiplexed. I could see this technology being spun off to make cell lines for bioproduction or in academic research in the near term, and being used to make designer humans in the longer term.

To de-extinct a species, Colossal must collect a truly massive amount of sequencing data to map related species and their genes, and experimental data from their mutant cells to see how changing the genotype affects the phenotype (single cell and organism level). Since they don’t want to spend the time or money to try every change they hypothesize will create the effect that they want, they use computational modeling to predict the phenotype of certain genomic mutations, based on their collected data. This data is extremely valuable, not just for de-extincting species, but it could also be useful in building protein folding and protein interaction models as well as building virtual cell models, all very hot topics right now in biotech.

5-15 years: Designer Life Forms

After years of research, Colossal will have generated enormous hype with press releases announcing the "rebirth" of species like the Dire Wolf, the thylacine, and maybe even a woolly mammoth. Then begins the long task of observing them. Are these phenotypically similar animals truly functionally similar? Do they have the same behaviors, diets, and environmental interactions? Can they fill the hole the extinct species left in their ecological niche, rebalancing the food chain and making their environment more robust? This could take decades, unless a government, desperate to fix a collapsing ecosystem, gives them the green light for premature deployment. While this may be a tailwind for the company, I don’t believe it's their most profitable vertical.

Remember all that data? By this point, Colossal will have spent a fortune decoding the genotype-to-phenotype map in complex mammals. They will know exactly which genetic “knobs” to turn to “tune” an animal to their specifications. They may have even nailed down genomic links to behavior, like intelligence and aggression. With their refined gene-editing tools, they will be ready to pivot to a new market: designer pets.

Imagine designing the perfect dog or cat—one that looks exactly how you want, has zero genetic diseases, and is engineered to be perfectly docile and well-behaved. From there, they will move into more exotic animals: domesticated, kitten-like tigers or tiny lemurs that couldn't survive in the wild. These creatures will be designed for maximum appeal with large eyes, big ears, and customizable sizes.

designer dog forever puppy

Designer pets are the perfect initial market for their technology. People will pay a small fortune to personalize, clone, and guarantee the health of a beloved animal. At the same time, this venture serves as a massive case study, allowing Colossal to perfect its technology at scale without endangering human lives. This designer pet period will also lend itself to be another data point in their FDA application for human use; safe for complex mammals. This is similar to what the anti-aging company Loyal is doing. First in dogs, then in humans.

Of course, every powerful new technology has a military application. The one I can’t stop thinking about is the designed apex predator. This predator, perhaps a big hyperaggressive Dire Wolf, could track down a scent from miles away, and when the scent is found, attack with ruthlessness. These biological weapons would be used in locations where guerilla warfare makes centralized attacks impossible. They would be fast, smart, and operate with no distractions and little food, with a singular goal in mind.

15-50 years: The Post-Human Era

Once their technology has been perfected on complex animals and deemed "safe," the final barrier will fall: they will move on to humans. Far past curing disease, you can choose your kids eye color, hair color, height, IQ, proportions, etc…. You will even be able to change your own characteristics, such as eye and hair color. While changing your height would be painful, and altering adult intelligence seems difficult given the nature of neurons, who knows what will be possible in 50 years?

In this age of designer humans, all of the ethicist’s worst fears will have been realized; some genes will be adopted by the rich as status symbols, there will be “gene trends”, and a new genetic caste system will emerge. New genes will be invented for new phenotypes. Those who want horns coming out of their head, silver skin, or thumbs on their feet, will be able to have them. Humans will be edited to thrive in the low-gravity environments of Mars, fulfilling the ambitions of founders like Musk with the tools of founders like Lamm. A new age for humanity will be born.

The work being done at Colossal will enable this future and probably much much more. While de-extinction is the stated goal, the ultimate goal is gaining mastery over biology itself. We will soon face profound moral quandaries that will redefine our species. As we learn to write our own biological code, our potential will skyrocket, but we'll have to ask ourselves: in our quest to reach the stars, what part of our humanity are we willing to edit away?