Ben Lamm
Ben Lamm is an American billionaire entrepreneur. He is best known for partnering with George Church on the idea for de-extinction and founding a venture capital-backed startup known as Colossal to support Church's work in the development of genetic engineering and reproductive technology. As of 2025, his net worth is $3.7 billion.
Career
Lamm founded his first company when he was a senior at Baylor University.He later sold ventures such as Simply Interactive, an e-learning software company ; Chaotic Moon Studios, a mobile app company ; Team Chaos, a digital gaming company ; Conversable, a SaaS conversational bot technology ; and Hypergiant Industries, a machine-learning artificial intelligence, for undisclosed sums upon each company's acquisition.
In 2019, Lamm used $15 million in seed funding to apply genetic technology such as "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats" for Colossal's work on conservation biology. At its launch in 2021, he received media attention for claiming that Colossal would "bring back the woolly mammoth" within the next decade. Lamm secured investments from public figures such as Paris Hilton, Thomas Tull, Tom Brady, Peter Jackson, Chris Hemsworth, and Victor Vescovo and has raised more than $235 million as of October 2024.
During the 2022 South by Southwest festival, Lamm was on a panel moderated by Richard Garriott that made the case for de-extinction.
In late 2022, Lamm co-founded Form Bio, a software company spun out of Colossal Biosciences. The company aims to develop software to improve the working efficiency of scientists. Form Bio was funded through a $30 million investment deal involving Thomas Tull.
Lamm launched Breaking, a plastic degradation and synthetic biology startup, in April 2024. Gestated at Colossal, Breaking discovered X-32, a microbe that is capable of breaking down various plastics in as little as 22 months while leaving behind carbon dioxide, water and biomass.
File:SXSW London Engineering The Impossible.jpg|thumb|Lamm and Sophie Turner at SXSW London in June 2025.
In October 2024, Lamm launched The Colossal Foundation, a 501 that utilizes Colossal Biosciences-developed technology for conservative efforts globally. Biobanking is one of its key focuses. As of February 2025, Colossal has raised $435 million in total funding since its foundation.
In 2025, Lamm led his company's de-extinction work to revive the dire wolf. Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi were announced publicly that April.
Lamm was recognized on the 2025 Time 100 Next list.