Colossal Biosciences reportedly in talks to raise new capital at $20B–$30B valuation

Colossal Biosciences, the biotechnology company known for its ambition to bring back extinct species, is reportedly negotiating a fresh funding round that would value the company at somewhere between $20 billion and $30 billion. That figure, first reported by Axios, would mark a two-to-threefold jump from where the company stood roughly a year and a half ago.

Details remain scarce. It is not yet known which investors might be leading the prospective round, nor how much money the five-year-old firm is ultimately seeking to raise. What has surfaced, according to the report, is that Colossal has begun bringing in revenue over the past twelve months, a milestone that could help justify the steep valuation jump to prospective backers.

The company last drew major attention roughly sixteen months ago, when it announced it had used genetic material recovered from fossil remains in an attempt to bring the dire wolf back from extinction. The claim generated significant public fascination alongside skepticism from scientists who questioned whether the resulting animals could truly be considered a revived species rather than a genetically modified approximation.

At the time, that announcement helped underpin a valuation of $10.2 billion. Despite the scientific debate over what exactly counts as "de-extinction," the case was made that Colossal's underlying genetic engineering and biotechnology work carried real commercial value independent of the headline-grabbing dire wolf project, providing a foundation for the price tag investors were willing to accept.

A leap to a valuation as high as $30 billion would place Colossal among the more richly valued private biotechnology companies, rivaling some of the largest names in the broader tech startup landscape. Such a jump would signal that investors see applications for the company's gene-editing and reproductive technology extending well beyond reviving long-vanished species, potentially touching conservation efforts, agriculture, or pharmaceutical development.

Still, the size of the reported valuation range invites scrutiny. A doubling or tripling of a company's worth in under a year and a half is an aggressive climb, even by the standards of hyped biotech and AI-adjacent startups, and it will likely prompt questions about what specific milestones or revenue figures are driving the new price. Until the round closes and terms become public, the numbers should be treated as a target under negotiation rather than a finalized outcome.

What happens next will depend on which investors step in and how much capital they commit. If the deal closes near the reported range, it would cement Colossal's position as one of the most highly valued private science ventures, while also raising the stakes for the company to demonstrate that its revenue and research progress can keep pace with investor expectations.

Source: TechCrunch