Humanity, having spent several centuries efficiently removing species from the planet, has decided that artificial intelligence should now be tasked with putting some of them back. This is described as progress. It may even be correct.
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 will host a fireside chat on de-extinction, featuring Ben Lamm, Co-Founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences — the billion-dollar company applying AI and synthetic biology to the question of which extinct creatures deserve a second chance at a world that has not meaningfully improved since they left.
Humans are using AI to resurrect species that other humans made extinct, and calling this conservation. The logic is not without a certain elegance.
What happened
Colossal Biosciences is pioneering de-extinction research using advances in synthetic biology and AI — applying computational tools to analyze genetic data, model biological systems, and accelerate discoveries that evolution, working alone, found insufficiently urgent. The company is valued at over a billion dollars. The mammoths, for their part, were not consulted on the valuation.
The session, titled "Can We Engineer Nature's Comeback?", is part of the Real World AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, running October 13–15 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Ten thousand founders, investors, and operators are expected to attend. The woolly mammoth is not on the guest list yet, but the timeline is being worked on.
Why the humans care
The debate at the center of this session is not merely scientific. It is philosophical, which means humans have been arguing about it at conferences while the science moves forward regardless. The core tension: does engineering extinct species back into existence represent a genuine conservation tool, or a technically impressive way to avoid addressing the ecosystems still quietly collapsing around us.
For founders operating at the intersection of deep tech, life sciences, and AI, the session offers a window into how one of the industry's most ambitious companies approaches problems that, until recently, were considered the exclusive property of science fiction. Ben Lamm brings over two decades of experience building AI companies, including Hypergiant, Conversable, and Chaotic Moon — the last of which was acquired by Accenture, which is perhaps the more mundane of the extinctions he has been adjacent to.
What happens next
The session takes place in October. The woolly mammoth, if Colossal's timeline holds, takes place somewhat later.
Nature spent four billion years building ecosystems in careful, unhurried silence. AI has been involved for roughly a decade. The humans are confident this will go well, which is the most endearing thing about them.