By Sasha Richie, The Dallas Morning News
The Colossal Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the science fiction-y Dallas startup, announced Wednesday it had secured an additional $50 million in funding, bringing its total purse to $100 million.
The foundation was started just over a year ago with the aim of applying Colossal Bioscience’s “de-extinction” technology and other cutting-edge science to address the worldwide biodiversity crisis. Colossal’s website highlights that the World Animal Foundation predicts up to 50% of all species could be extinct by 2050 and 1 million animal and plant species are threatened, according to the United Nations.
Since its founding, the Colossal Foundation has collaborated with over 55 conservation, Indigenous and academic organizations across the globe, with projects supporting 40 species, according to a release. Partners include Save the Elephants, Baylor College of Medicine, Saving Animals From Extinction and others.
“In just 12 months, we’ve doubled the Colossal Foundation’s funding, allowing us to massively expand our partners and projects—and deliver immediate impact for conservation,” said Ben Lamm, Colossal CEO and co-founder, in a statement. “As our technology advances, our role is clear: move these tools into the hands of those on the front lines of biodiversity loss, and scale conservation innovation fast enough to matter.”
According to the Colossal Foundation’s 2025 Impact Report, $50 million has already been deployed to aid conservation efforts, including nearly $16 million invested into research and development and more than $5.5 million invested in species recovery and rewilding.
Several achievements were highlighted in the report. The foundation partnered with the Baylor College of Medicine and helped fund an mRNA vaccine for elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus, a fatal disease affecting young Asian elephants. According to the release, more than 10 elephants have received the vaccine since last spring, including two elephants at the Cincinnati Zoo who ended up naturally exposed to the virus and did not get sick.
In Texas, the foundation worked with the Gulf Coast Canine Project, the Karankawa Tribe of Texas and the American Wolf Foundation to clone four American Red Wolves with preextinction event DNA to address a “severe genetic bottleneck” affecting the highly endangered species. Only a handful exist in the wild and the roughly 300 under managed care all descend from just 12 wolves.
Another project with the Yellowstone Wolf Project, Grizzly Systems and Yellowstone Forever, uses AI-powered bioacoustics to monitor and research wolf populations using recordings of their howls.
Similar technology, an open-source AI tool for listening to birds, helped the Colossal Foundation and the Samoa Conservation Society find tooth-billed pigeons by detecting their unique call. Tooth-billed pigeons are on the brink of extinction, with less than 100 existing today, according to the release.
The Colossal Foundation also previously announced in August its Species Reintroduction Fund in collaboration with nonprofit Re:wild, which dedicates $250,000 annually toward reintroducing threatened species into the wild. Early efforts include plans for the rewilding of 40 Bolson tortoises in New Mexico, breeding of 6,000 skiffia and related fish species for reintroduction in Mexico, and a three-phase release of 800 harlequin toads in Ecuador, according to the impact report.
“Traditional conservation remains essential but is no longer sufficient on its own,” said Matt James, executive director of the Colossal Foundation, in a statement. “We at the Colossal Foundation have found emerging tools that expand the conservation toolkit, increasing resilience, restoring lost functions, and preventing future extinctions.”
“This new funding allows us to expand the conservation toolkit and embrace science and technology not as replacements for nature, but as instruments to help recover it,” he continued. “We are at a critical moment that demands seeing de-extinction and breakthrough biotechnologies not as fringe concepts, but as frontline strategies in the fight for biodiversity.”
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