Does Colossal Biosciences Divert Funding Away from Conserving Living Species?

No, Colossal does not divert funding away from conserving living species or compete for traditional conservation dollars. Instead, it brings new, tech-driven capital into conservation and channels de-extinction R&D into real-world projects through the Colossal Foundation and partners worldwide. 

The global spend on soda is 3x higher than the spend on conservation. To truly address the extinction crisis, we need to find new ways to bring investment into conservation. 

Rather than siphoning resources from existing conservation work, Colossal uses profit-driven, scalable business models to expand the overall pool of funding and support real, on-the-ground projects for living species and their habitats.

To turn that new funding and technology into actual conservation outcomes, Colossal focuses on building and deploying conservation tools that partners can use in the field.

Conservation Technology

• Colossal Species Reintroduction Fund, the world’s first dedicated accelerator for wildlife recovery, advances rewilding efforts through genetic, reproductive, and disease mitigation technologies
• AI-powered conservation technologies deployed with partner organizations globally 
  • Bioacoustic systems that detect rare species like the tooth-billed pigeon through call recognition
  • Drone-based wildlife behavior tracking for elephant monitoring
  • Acoustic monitoring systems decode wolf communication in Yellowstone
• Colossal open-source de-extinction conservation tools are freely available to conservationists worldwide, helping partners save species, accelerate their work, scale their impact, and overcome financial barriers to innovation in wildlife conservation

Direct Conservation Impact

• Colossal Foundation partners with 50+ conservation organizations globally
• Four critically endangered red “ghost” wolves were successfully cloned using de-extinction technologies
• World’s first mRNA vaccine for elephants developed to combat deadly EEHV (elephant endotheliotropic herpes) virus
• $3 million commitment to combat chytrid fungus threatening over 500 amphibian species with extinction
• Gene editing to engineer toxin resistance in northern quolls, protecting Australia’s endangered marsupials from invasive cane toads

Broader Applications

• De-extinction tools create value in agriculture, human healthcare, and biotechnology
• Economic returns are reinvested in conservation rather than competing for existing dollars
• Underfunded research areas receive new investment through biotechnology applications

For more details on Colossal’s welfare standards, oversight processes, and ecological risk safeguards, see Ethics at Colossal Biosciences: Oversight & Safeguards and the Ethics & Purpose Glossary.