Credit: Anna Tutova (Founder AI Crypto Minds) with Ben Lamm (co-Founder & CEO Colossal Biosciences) at World Governments Summit in Dubai.

When you walk into Dubai's Museum of the Future this year, you might encounter science fiction turned fact: a living laboratory where scientists are building humanity's ultimate backup plan, a vault for life itself.

Colossal Biosciences has chosen Dubai as the site of its first global Colossal BioVault, a $60 million initiative announced at the World Governments Summit earlier this month. The plan: a “global network” of genetic backups, with the Museum facility housing millions of samples from over 10,000 species, a biological insurance policy for the planet.

At the heart of this vision stands Ben Lamm, the Texas-born tech entrepreneur who co-founded Colossal Biosciences, a company valued at over USD 10.32 billion, backed from the likes of Paris Hilton, Tom Brady, TWG Global, Breyer Capital, crypto visionaries etc. Colossal is known globally as the world's first "de-extinction" startup and famous for its audacious goals: bringing back the Woolly Mammoth, the Dodo and the Tasmanian Tiger.

In an exclusive interview with me, Ben Lamm opened up about the transformative UAE partnership and what's next for Colossal Biosciences.

"We're not working on dinosaurs, there's no dino DNA," Ben Lamm laughs. "That makes some people sad, makes some people happy."

Ben Lamm wants to talk about preservation, not resurrection. "What not enough people are talking about is species preservation and the fact that we’re gonna lose up to 50% of all biodiversity in the  next 25 years," he states bluntly. "And so that’s why this announcement with the UAE is so important because we need to establish global biovaults in a network fashion where we’re backing up cells because we are making tremendous progress,on technologies for conservation, but it’s still, we are losing species at a faster rate than when we were able to save them through modern conservation."

A Global Network for Life

At its core, the Colossal BioVault aims to preserve biodiversity on a planetary scale. Housed inside the Museum of the Future, it will store cells and genetic material from thousands of species, including the world's most imperiled ones, using robotics, AI-powered sequencing and cryogenic preservation. Think of it as a biological time capsule but open for learning, not secrecy.

"And what’s amazing about Dubai and the Museum of the Future is that we’re not only creating that backup here in the first one in the world, in Dubai, but we’re also wrapping educational content around it so that we’re not just putting it in a secret dark room. We wanna make sure that kids and parents and teachers can learn about de-extinction, can learn about species preservation, and the crisis that we’re in from a biodiversity perspective," says Ben Lamm.

The UAE collaboration also cements Dubai's role as a global hub for science and sustainability, a symbolic alignment with its ambitions to be a leader in future-driven technologies. For Colossal, the city represents something more profound: momentum.

"The work happening across the UAE, the ability to execute and set a very big vision and deliver on them is unmatched," Ben Lamm says. "When you go to the Museum of the Future, it`s a living lab, and you feel like you're in the future. I couldn't think of a better partner to launch this global network with."

A Vision Toward 2050

Asked what success looks like for Colossal by 2050, Ben Lamm paints a picture that sounds audacious yet meticulous: a planetary database of life.

"By then I want to have an established network starting here in Dubai of BioVaults around the world backing up local species," he says. "I hope that all of the critically endangered species, all the regional specific species, all the culturally important species, all the keystone species are fully backed up. We’ve done all of the genome sequencing, made that publicly available for the world and for science and for academia. And then I’d love to ensure that all of that is then being cross-pollinated and shared all over the world".

That open-access approach might unsettle some, given the sensitivity of genomic data. But Ben Lamm believes that openness is essential.

"The world has an opportunity to learn from the genetic data of countries all over the world," he argues. "Other than certain know-hows, there's not a lot of value in things you can't patent."

Beyond Mammoths: Restoring Ecosystems

Colossal may have captured the world's imagination with projects like bringing back the woolly mammoth or tasmanian tiger, but Ben Lamm insists these headlines only scratch the surface.

"You learn a lot from these technologies that can then be applied to sister species, like the red wolf, dire wolves…or other keystone species," he explains. "We're working on species that man had a role in their demise, that can also go back into the ecosystem, that can help the ecosystems, that also have connections to local indigenous people groups."

So is this just Jurassic Park made real? Hardly, he says it's ecological engineering in service of sustainability. Before any species is reintroduced, teams perform detailed environmental studies.

As for the criticism that resurrecting species like the Mammoth is an “intrusion” into nature, Ben Lamm is adamant that the science supports the mission. "A lot of their environments all exist exactly the same or slightly different," he insists, pointing out that Mammoths lived through interglacial periods warmer than today. "We do deep ecological studies and surveys and work with ecologists and conservationists before we put any animal back into the wild."

Spinouts and the "Apollo Program" for Biology

While its de-extinction work grabs headlines, Colossal's business model is quietly reshaping biotechnology. The company has already spun out multiple ventures, including Form Bio, a human healthcare technology firm, and Breaking, a plastic degradation startup that breaks chemical bonds rather than just making smaller pieces of plastic.

"It's very much like the Apollo program," Ben Lamm says. "We've spun out numerous technology companies. Our first two businesses, Form Bio and Breaking, are each worth well over $100 million. It's not just about de-extinction – it's about the synthetic biology platform that we’ve built that’s truly unmatched."

Crypto Visionaries and Dubai's Edge

The company's investors include an eclectic mix of tech visionaries: from athletes like Tom Brady and cultural icons like Paris Hilton, to crypto pioneers like Animoca Brands and the Charles Hoskinson Family Office.

"A lot of these people are visionaries. They’re thinking about the future of finance, they’re thinking about the future of currency, the future of securitization, how to build community and how to empower the community economically", – says Ben Lamm. "That whole decentralized science movement really started with that community. It makes sense that our earliest investors were the crypto community, because they're so forward-leaning and they’re thinking about the future, just like Dubai."

Although Colossal isn't currently building blockchain technology, Ben Lamm sees future potential: from scientific record-keeping to tracking preservation data across distributed networks. "There are applications," he says.

A Living Lab for Humanity

The Museum of the Future's new laboratory will allow the public to witness the preservation process in real time. Visitors will see scientists receiving samples from the field, sequencing DNA, and cryopreserving cell lines, turning science into spectacle, and spectators into citizen scientists.

If successful, this model could scale to other nations, creating a distributed backup for life, a planetary insurance policy against extinction. But for now, Dubai is the epicenter.

"We’re really focused on our BioVaults and our partnership with Dubai", says Ben Lamm. "We try not to talk too much of the future because we have so much going on in the present. This partnership is a major step not just for Dubai and Colossal, but for the entire world of conservation."

As the world races against time to protect what's left of Earth's biodiversity, Colossal's plan feels at once radical and necessary. It's a fusion of ambition and urgency and, fittingly, it begins in a city built on both.

Benzinga Disclaimer: This article is from an unpaid external contributor. It does not represent Benzinga’s reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.