Colossal Biosciences, a company on a mission to resurrect the mammoth and two other extinct species, has raised $200 million in Series C funding from TWG Global, a partnership between Guggenheim Partners co-founders Mark Walter and Billionaire Billionaire Thomas Tull. The company completed its last funding round two years ago at a valuation of $1.5 billion.

Why would investors pour so much money at an eye-popping valuation into a company that has yet to generate any revenue and whose flagship project to revive extinct mammoths and Tasmanian tigers isn't expected to be completed until 2028?

"Investors are impressed by the speed with which we create new technologies," Colossal Biosciences co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm told TechCrunch.

The company claims to have achieved major breakthroughs on each of its three major projects, which include the dodo in addition to the mammoth and Tasmanian tiger (also known as the thylacine), and has completed the resurrection of the animals on schedule or even ahead of schedule .

Colossal's approach to resurrecting extinct animals involves mapping the species' entire genome and then comparing it to their closest living relatives, which in the case of mammoths, is the Asian elephant. Lamm said this stage has been completed for mammoths and thylacines, and now the company's scientists are using the gene-editing tool CRISPR to edit the cells of Asian elephants. In the final step, Ram explains, the cells will be placed into an egg cell and the embryo will be implanted into an elephant, which will give birth to a mammoth.

To achieve its mission, Colossal has been developing a variety of technologies, including artificial wombs, through which the company hopes to birth future generations of "extinct" animals.

“Some of these technologies alone are capable of changing the world in human health care, in agricultural technology, in all these different categories,” he said.

While Colossal Biosciences' ultimate goal is to restore extinct species and enhance biodiversity, the company's primary value to investors may lie in the potential of its technology.

Colossal plans to divest three businesses over the next two years, one of which will involve its artificial womb technology, which may have applications in fertility treatments.

The company has spun off two businesses: Breaking, which helps break down plastic, and which raised $10.5 million in seed funding last year, and Form Bio, a computational biology platform, which raised $30 million.

Government partnerships are another potential source of revenue. While Colossal provides its conservation technology to governments for free, Ram said some countries are looking to Colossal for help in protecting endangered species. Some governments are also exploring anti-extinction programs targeting animals that have cultural (and in some cases spiritual) value to their people.

If Colossal successfully resurrects any species and reintroduces them into their respective ecosystems, the company expects to generate revenue through the sale of biodiversity credits, a market mechanism similar to carbon credits.

Lamm said all three of its revenue streams - technology, government partnerships and biodiversity credits - could generate billions of dollars in annual recurring revenue, and they showed "short-, medium- and long-term economics" for the company potential.