Colossal Biosciences, which is trying to bring back the woolly mammoth with genetics tech, has spun out its AI startup Astromech at a $2 billion valuation.
Founded by Colossal founders Ban Lamm and George Church, the AI-driven biological intelligence company Astromech is Colossal Biosciences first spinout to reach unicorn status (a valuation above $1 billion).
As an AI company, Astromech is currently focused on highly targeted models in the deep R&D phase. Its most recent funding round valued the company at $2 billion. To date, the company filed a notice last year saying it had raised $30 million. That round eventually reaped another $10.5 million, for a total round raise of $40.5 million.
The company emerged publicly in August 2025. Gestated within Colossal Biosciences, Astromech applies advanced AI and computational technologies to biotechnology — particularly genomics, synthetic biology, and evolutionary prediction modeling.
The platform integrates two complementary capabilities: deep learning algorithms that identify biological patterns across species, and Bayesian ancestral reconstruction methods that model evolutionary trajectories.
Together, these form a unified biological intelligence architecture, combining genomic, evolutionary, and functional data to predict biological outcomes and uncover the regulatory mechanisms that shape them over time — a significant step toward modeling how living systems evolve, including key susceptibility points.