Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:37:23 · Ben Lamm, Alexa von Tobel
If if that's something that that that is wanted, like in the case of the dire wolf, one of our... We had several different indigenous partners and one of them being MHA nation, which is three nations that came together. It's actually in their oral traditions in in in their culture. They think that it may have been the gray wolf or... Sorry. The the the great wolf in their in their cultures. So they're very, very... They're excited about eventually, could they have them on a secure ecological reserve back on their sovereign land? And so for us, we just wanna collaborate in any way that people want to. [00:37:57] S1: Okay. Ben, I'm gonna ask, like, super to your point of, like, you're comfortable asking really dumb questions. I'm gonna ask mine. Now that you're observing them, what's, like, the thing that you're observing that you could be most excited about? And what are the... What's... What are you observing that you're worried about?
00:38:10 · Ben Lamm
[00:38:10] S2: There was an inflection point that changed for me because right before launch, you know, we... In this world of, like, generative AI, we wanted people to see them, but we also didn't want there to be, like, a travel receipt to a certain location. Right? And so we actually moved them to another location to let a couple of key people see them like, you know, Time and and and Rolling Stone and New York and a few others. So we we felt like, hey, we got a lot of some people see them, so it's like, don't just take our word for it. Like, you come see them, spend a day with us and and and whatnot. And right after they got back, like, I was back where they were two and a half weeks after that. And I was I was in the preserve. Right? And some of my animal care teams were like, you know, I don't know, 50, 100 yards away. And I was and I was sitting in the in this... In the... In one of their play areas. And Remus came up to it, came up like kind of close to me and I bottle fed Romulus and Remus. And so like I reached out and I pet Remus, barely touched Remus because, you know, Remus came to me. And then and then Remus, like, kinda step... Took a few steps and then kinda like started acting like a wolf. Right? Like, kinda like jumped away, like, like a little... Like, like, moved a little bit and it was a little skittish. And so there was a moment, you know, like you you can never forget that these animals are still wild animals. Right? These are still wolves. These are not dogs. And so that was a moment for me where I was like, I'm never going to pet or touch or probably be this close to them again because they're now starting to behave more and more like wolves. Like when they're fluffy, you know, polar bear looking puppies, they're like... You're kinda like, oh, this is like... You you you... I think it it falsifies the relationship on some level. So I I think I was pleasantly surprised that... And that... And our behavioral team is pleasantly surprised how fast they are adapting to be nearly wild wolves. Only only one of our key caretakers, she... That... Who's with them literally every day, at least six days a week. There's... Like she's the only one that that has that level of a relationship still. And remember this this was only a few months ago, right? Like a few months before, like they were, like, falling in my lap. Right?
00:40:36 · Ben Lamm, Alexa von Tobel
And so and so so that was that that was the thing that, you know, I... You know, our animal care team told me that we would... If things were going healthily with their development, they would get to. But then there was that moment where I kind of experienced it firsthand. Was like, I don't think I'm ever gonna be in the preserve again. [00:40:57] S1: Yeah. You're like wild wolves, like, literally. [00:41:00] S2: Yeah. Like, this is this is a good... This has been great, and I love you guys, but I'm gonna I'm gonna respect you from my my distance. Right? And so, but that was something that that, you know, I I think that was both sides of of your question. [00:41:13] S1: When you think five to ten years out with what you're doing, what's the what's the end state? What's the end goal here? And, obviously, you've created an incredible AI infrastructure that cannot only code extinct animals, then create this bridge to the most, you know, similar living species. And then in it, I I heard you say, you know, synthetic wounds and all these incredible other things. But is... And so so what's the business model? And, like, what's the... What's your hope and dream been for what you're building five to ten years out?
00:41:47 · Ben Lamm
[00:41:47] S2: So I'll talk about the hope and dream and then we can talk business. But hope and dream, if we fast forward ten years out, I hope that we have a handful of species that we have brought back with enough engineered genetic diversity that they can successfully thrive and live and thrive on their own back in their natural habitat or something very close to it. Right? So so that that's data point one. The second thing that I think is equally important is I hope we we're seeing mass adoption much quicker than we thought with our technologies to conservation. But I hope that that a combination of those tools and technologies, including things like artificial wounds and bio banking all come together so that this de extinction toolkit that's super cool to bring back things like mammoths and thylacines, and hopefully even species like Steller's sea cow and others that we can't yet because we don't have waste ingesting them. I hope that same application is being applied in real time for endangered species. And, know, I don't... And once again, sometimes this is an unpopular opinion, I'm... I still am convicted about it regardless of whether it's it's it's popular or not. Like, while 99.9% of the world should be focusing on existing or slightly innovative new ways for conservation, there is 1%, which I think should be us, that is is developing some level of a fail safe. And if we can get to the point which we can take samples, engineering genetic diversity, and then use artificial wombs to grow a 100 Northern White Rhinos versus even having to use surrogates, right, from an animal welfare perspective, from a population growth perspective. You know, if we could help production... Use these tools to help productionize endangered species, well, then I think that we will get recovery of species much faster. And that's not to take away from the incredible work that current conservation has done for the last hundred years. It's just new tools to help augment the fight. Right? Because it is currently a losing fight. So a world where a little kid can see videos or go to, you know, Northern America or Alaska or wherever and see, you know, mammoths thriving back in their population and also see a... Those technologies being applied to create a more biodiverse world in Africa with Northern White Rhinos and those same technologies being applied to both.
00:44:18 · Ben Lamm, Alexa von Tobel
To me, that... That's kinda my, I think, in state for sure. [00:44:22] S1: Important question just because I I wanna better understand it. How do you make money? [00:44:27] S2: Right now, we don't. We're really gonna loosen it. And and [00:44:33] S1: I bet you could sell you could sell a lot of people wanting to see photos of these... Of of the gaming.
00:44:39 · Ben Lamm
[00:44:39] S2: We we get all kinds of stuff. Like, get... We... They're like, you know, we get everything to... Will you make me a dragon to can I buy direwolves? Can you make a pink direwolf for my kids? Like, from... So we get all kinds of... We get weird... We get lots of weird request. And and and so our our bit... I don't think we yet know every aspect of it, but we know kinda three parts of the business model. When we started out, was just technology innovation. Right? We spun out two businesses that we've announced publicly. One, FormBio being a computational biology platform. The second one breaking, which is breaking.com. It's a it's a plastic degradation company that's using a a super accelerated microbe that we genetically engineered using our tools and computational biology to break down the... Break the chemical bonds of plastic. So not making smaller plastics, but literally eviscerating plastic. And then... And everything we've thrown at it, it works, which is pretty cool. And then we have a third one we haven't announced yet. We'll announce hopefully next year. So we'll continue to spin out technologies. And then there is a huge opportunity to work with governments to rewild these species, get government subsidies, get carbon credits, Eden bonds. There's a huge... Like like, if you look at the carbon market and the biodiversity credits market and what will probably end up being evolved into nature credits. And now you've got people like PwC certification. You've got people like, know, TPG just raised like an $8,000,000,000 funder on this thesis. You've got you've got Lloyd's of London certifying it. So I think that you're seeing kinda like you've seen in crypto, a a maturation of trackability as it relates to improvement to land and improvement to carbon sequestration and methane suppression. So, you know, if we are successful in our efforts to... And successful in rewilding them, I think there's a lot of long term... The animals become long term annuities, which which is which is pretty interesting. And then the third is governments. Governments are coming to us even though we open source our technology, kinda like open source a lot of times. We will go to the open source providers and say, hey, we tried this. This is great, but we need you to solve this problem.