Colossal's Ben Lamm Says Invasive Species Is a $5.4 Trillion Problem. Here's His Solution

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Invasive species represent a $5.4 trillion global problem, with U.S. economic impact alone exceeding $500 billion annually. That's according to Ben Lamm, CEO of Colossal Biosciences.

On episode 245 of the Moonshots with Peter Diamandis podcast, Lamm made the case that gene drive technology is the only scalable, humane answer.

"In New Zealand, in Australia, in parts of Africa, people are killing animals because they're invasive species. They're killing cats, they're killing possums... that's an animal welfare nightmare."

Colossal's proposed solution: genetically modified invasive animals that produce only male offspring, allowing populations to "live out their normal lives" before naturally dying out. No poison, no mass culling. Lamm also emphasized that Colossal's proprietary gene drive technologies are "safer than what has ever been dispersed in the wild" and, critically, reversible: "we have the ability to roll it back."

Texas has declared the screwworm a national emergency, with the pest currently spreading from Honduras through Mexico and threatening to "decimate our cattle and bison industry." Diamandis noted the scale of the commercial opportunity: "dozens of species to be attacked and cost dozens of billions."

Lamm's broader point: 99% of synthetic biology and genome engineering talent focuses only on human healthcare, but the same technologies "apply to other use cases I think are even larger economically, but also have a bigger opportunity to help us." He compared current invasive species control methods to "archaic ways of treating cancer versus what we know is here and what is coming."

Colossal is private, so the question becomes where this thesis shows up in public markets. The three companies building the foundational CRISPR toolkit are CRISPR Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CRSP), Beam Therapeutics (NASDAQ:BEAM), and Intellia Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NTLA).

CRISPR Therapeutics carries a $4.9 billion market cap with 17 analyst buy ratings and a consensus target of $83.35 against a current price of $51.22. Beam sits at $27.43 with 15 buy ratings and a $51.20 analyst target. Intellia, the smallest of the three at a $1.59 billion market cap, has surged 50% year-to-date to $13.49, with Phase 3 data on its lead HAE program expected mid-2026.

Their value here is as platform plays: the delivery systems, base editing precision, and in vivo editing capabilities they are refining for rare diseases are the same building blocks gene drive applications would require. If Lamm's thesis proves out and gene drives move toward regulatory acceptance, these platforms become the infrastructure layer underneath it.

If gene drives become the standard, the companies that own the most precise, reversible genome editing platforms stand to benefit well beyond their current therapeutic pipelines. That's the thread I'll be watching.