Warehound, cofounded by Ben Lam and Palmer Luckey, raised a seed round of over 200m dollars at a 1.2bn dollar valuation from Sequoia, 8VC and NQTEL.
Jessica Wimalasooriyar says Warehound's cloning and gene-editing plan targets a geopolitical gap, since about 80 percent of American military dogs come from Europe and about half fail testing.
Jan Thomas argues the militaries may need only a few thousand to tens of thousands of dogs a year, so the 1.2bn dollar valuation only works if the market is far larger.
Warehound raises over $200m to clone military dogs
Funding and deals
Warehound. Builds cloned, gene-edited military dogs and raised a seed round above $200m at a $1.2bn valuation, with Sequoia and 8VC among the backers.
Novus. Braunschweig maker of light electric motorcycles raised a round from 468 Capital and angels including founders of On and Xiaomi, with no amount given.
Guest interviews
Emanuel Pallua, Partner at 468 Capital. He says a highly capable artificial nose could make Warehound's product obsolete within three years, because a dog's sense of smell cannot be replicated today. He calls Novus one of the firm's more contrarian bets, since its angels buy the brand much as early Tesla Roadster buyers did. Its founder has chased the idea for about 15 years and plans four-wheeled models.
Jessica Wimalasooriyar, Investment Manager at IBB Ventures. She finds the $1.2bn Warehound valuation surprisingly high, since the full product is unvalidated and rests mainly on trust in the founders. She calls defense use of the dogs a grey zone, because the company frames its work as making dogs healthier. IBB Ventures would probably not back such founders, and she prefers defense tech and robotics to animals.
News
Most US military dogs come from Europe. About 80 percent of American military dogs are European, and about half of those fail testing. Emanuel Pallua reads this as Europeans breeding better, and he is surprised that a US breeding programme looks so hard to set up.
Military dog demand looks small for this valuation. Jan Thomas argues the military may need only a few thousand to tens of thousands of dogs a year, which makes the business a moonshot without an obvious large follow-on.
Defense and biotech now attract heavy venture money. Jessica Wimalasooriyar finds the flow of venture capital into defense tech and biotech remarkable. Jan Thomas was surprised that major investors back a dog-cloning project, since he expected them to avoid bad press.
South Korea cloned police dogs since early 2000s. Emanuel Pallua says South Korea aims to bring cloned dogs to market in early 2027. Jessica Wimalasooriyar says its edited detection dogs worked, though the state programme was discontinued in late 2017.
Robots challenge the case for military dogs. Jan Thomas thought Boston Dynamics had shown that some missions no longer need dogs. Emanuel Pallua cites a Y Combinator company that built robotic guide dogs and says a robot would excite him more.
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On this episode 3
Show 1
Kolossal keeps drawing funding for de-extinction. Kolossal wants to bring back extinct animals such as mammoths and sabertooth tigers. Emanuel Pallua says it attracts a lot of funding, which suggests it is making progress.