Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing bonus story of the week.

Today on Forbes, meet the billionaire CEO trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth.

Serial entrepreneur Ben Lamb and Harvard geneticist George Church started colossal biosciences in 2021

to bring back the woolly mammoth.

It's an idea that's equal parts crazy and brilliant,

with real-world implications for the environment, climate change, and even healthcare,

if they can pull it off.

With the company recently raising $200 million at a valuation of $10.2 billion,

led by TWG Global, CEO Lamb is now a billionaire,

worth $3.7 billion by Forbes's estimates. Church, who started work on the concept in his lab many years before it became a company, does not have an equity stake in colossal. Church said, quote,

the fact that I'm not a billionaire is almost as interesting as Ben being one. If I had a billion

dollars, I would just spend it on this. Church, who is 70 years old and known for his wild ideas,

had been working on sequencing the prehistoric woolly mammoths genome since around 2008.

Like many, he had an affection for big, furry, extinct creatures as a kid, but unlike most, he was also an expert in genomic sequencing.

In 1984, he developed the first genomic sequencing method, which resulted in the first genome sequence

for the human pathogen H. Pylori, which can cause stomach ulcers. He's also co-founded some

50 biotech companies. Church's woolly mammoth dreams started off in his lab with little

thought of turning them into a business. The idea was so far out there that he didn't even bring it to investors.

Church said, quote,

I was so confident that no one would fund it that I didn't even ask.

After giving a talk in 2013, he received $100,000 from Peter Thiel.

It wasn't even close enough to support his research.

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