Ben Lamm is an American serial entrepreneur 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.[1]
Ben Lamm | |
|---|---|
| Born | Benjamin Edward Lamm December 4, 1981 Austin, Texas, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Baylor University |
| Occupation | Serial entrepreneur |
| Known for | Founding: |
History edit
In 2019, Lamm used $15 million in seed funding to apply genetic technology such as "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats" (CRISPR) for Colossal's work on conservation biology.[2][3] At its launch in 2021, he received media attention for claiming that Colossal would "bring back the wooly mammoth" within the next decade. Lamm secured investments from public figures such as Paris Hilton, Charles Hoskinson, and Thomas Tull and has raised more than $75 million as of March 2022.[4][5] During the 2022 South by Southwest festival, Lamm was on a panel moderated by Richard Garriott that made the case for de-extinction.[6]
Lamm founded his first company when he was a senior at Baylor University.[7] He sold ventures such as Simply Interactive, an e-learning software company (acquired by Agile in 2010), Chaotic Moon Studios, a mobile app company (acquired by Accenture in 2015), Team Chaos, a digital gaming company (acquired by Zynga in 2016), Conversable, a SaaS conversational bot technology (acquired by LivePerson in 2018), and Hypergiant Industries, a machine-learning artificial intelligence, for undisclosed sums upon each company's acquisition.[8][9][10] Lamm remains a member of the board for Hypergiant.[11]
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.[12]
External links edit
References edit
- ^ Heid, Jason. "How One Texas Entrepreneur Aims to Transform the World With Artificial Intelligence". Texas Monthly.
- ^ Wolf, Marin (13 September 2021). "Dallas entrepreneur Ben Lamm embarks on a new adventure: bringing back the woolly mammoth". The Dallas Morning News.
- ^ Brown, Mike (March 3, 2020). "Ben Lamm and Hypergiant Want to Bring Space Back to the Future". Inverse.
- ^ Zimmer, Carl (September 13, 2021). "A New Company With a Wild Mission: Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth". New York Times.
- ^ Carlson, Kara (9 March 2022). "Austin entrepreneur's startup lands $60 million as it tries to bring back the woolly mammoth". Austin American-Statesman.
- ^ Murphy, J. Kim (18 January 2022). "SXSW Reveals Additions to Line-Up of Featured Speakers for 2022 Festival". Variety.
- ^ Abril, Danielle (27 February 2018). "Ben Lamm Has An Unconventional Approach to Business, And It Somehow Works". D Magazine.
- ^ De Luce, Ivan (10 June 2019). "This 37-year-old serial entrepreneur's new startup is using AI to explore space — and mix cocktails". Business Insider.
- ^ Clifford, Catherine (6 December 2020). "This 39-year-old tech exec has built 5 companies, but there's a price to his ambition". CNBC.
- ^ Angell, Melissa (January 24, 2022). "Why Creating a Company to Resurrect the Woolly Mammoth Makes Perfect Sense for Ben Lamm". Inc.
- ^ Seeley, David (May 5, 2023). "Hypergiant Awarded Over $16M from U.S. Air Force for Cloud-Based Command and Control UX". Dallas Innovates.
- ^ Elias, Paul (September 27, 2022). ""De-Extinction" Company Colossal Launches Form Bio to Maximize Tech". Biospace.