Hear how AI can engineer nature’s comeback at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026

Not agelong ago, bringing an extinct taxon backmost to beingness belonged to subject fiction. Today, it’s the ngo of a billion-dollar startup. Advances successful artificial intelligence, genetics, and computational biology are changing what’s imaginable successful conservation research, raising questions that widen acold beyond the laboratory. If exertion tin assistance revive extinct species, should it? And what relation should AI play successful shaping the aboriginal of biodiversity? 

Those are the questions astatine the halfway of “Can We Engineer Nature’s Comeback?“, a Real World AI Stage fireside chat astatine TechCrunch Disrupt 2026.

Joining the speech is Ben Lamm, Co-Founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, a institution pioneering efforts to bring extinct taxon backmost done advances successful synthetic biology and AI. Rather than focusing solely connected the science, the treatment explores the technologies down de-extinction, the relation AI present plays successful modern biology, and the increasing statement implicit whether engineering quality represents a conservation breakthrough — oregon a distraction from protecting the ecosystems we already have.

Image Credits:TechCrunch

Disrupt returns to Moscone West successful San Francisco, October 13–15, bringing unneurotic 10,000+ founders, investors, and operators for 250+ sessions exploring the technologies and marketplace forces shaping what’s next. Hear 1 of this year’s astir provocative conversations. Secure your walk to Disrupt.

Where AI meets biology

AI is already reshaping software, robotics, and technological research. Biology whitethorn beryllium its adjacent frontier. Researchers are utilizing AI to analyse familial data, exemplary biologic systems, and accelerate discovery. Companies similar Colossal are pushing those advances adjacent further, applying AI alongside synthetic biology to questions that until precocious belonged successful subject fiction.

This session explores wherever those technologies intersect and what happens erstwhile AI moves beyond integer systems and into the earthy world. For founders moving astatine the intersection of heavy tech, beingness sciences, and AI, it’s an accidental to perceive however 1 of the industry’s astir ambitious companies is approaching problems fewer organizations person attempted to solve.

Explore the Real World AI Stage lineup and register for Disrupt today.

A laminitis gathering astatine the borderline of what’s possible

Ben Lamm has spent much than 2 decades gathering companies astatine the intersection of AI and emerging technologies. A serial entrepreneur, he’s built businesses focused connected solving analyzable challenges — from endeavor AI and captious infrastructure to conversational intelligence. Before founding Colossal Biosciences, helium launched respective pioneering exertion companies, including Hypergiant, Conversable, and Chaotic Moon, which were aboriginal acquired by Trive Capital, LivePerson, and Accenture.

Today, he’s applying that entrepreneurial mindset to an wholly antithetic challenge: utilizing AI and synthetic biology to research de-extinction arsenic a conservation tool. That enactment has made Colossal 1 of the astir intimately watched — and astir debated — companies successful subject and technology. As CEO, Lamm sits astatine the halfway of conversations astir biodiversity, clime resilience, emerging technologies, and the responsibilities that travel with engineering surviving systems.

His acquisition offers founders a uncommon look astatine what happens erstwhile breakthrough exertion doesn’t conscionable disrupt an industry, challenging however we deliberation astir what’s possible.

Join the speech with 1 of tech’s astir unconventional founders. Secure your Disrupt walk today.

A speech bigger than de-extinction, lone astatine Disrupt 2026

Reviving extinct taxon captures headlines. The broader questions whitethorn beryllium adjacent much significant. As AI becomes portion of technological discovery, conversations astir exertion progressively widen beyond bundle into medicine, biology, conservation, and clime science. Those advances bring caller possibilities, but they besides rise hard questions astir how, and where, these tools should beryllium used.

Whether you presumption de-extinction arsenic a technological breakthrough, a conservation strategy, oregon a arguable experiment, the treatment reaches acold beyond immoderate azygous species. It asks what relation emerging technologies should play successful solving immoderate of the world’s astir analyzable problems and who gets to decide.

Lock successful your walk to Disrupt with up to $200 successful savings, and articulation the speech astir wherever AI, biology, and innovation intersect.

Image Credits:Kimberly White / Getty Images