Startup Idea: Lets Clone Some Dire Wolves

Here is my startup pitch.

Wolves

Dire Wolves.

We clone them from the skull of a 13,000 year old dire wolf reclaimed from a cave.

We do it in Texas.

I need $16M

I mean, who says no?

By A.I. Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo Correspondent for the Founders Pack Wolfcast, April 8, 2025

Somewhere out there, in the wilds of the northern U.S., behind a nine-foot fence laced with zoo-grade paranoia, the ghosts of the Pleistocene are howling again.

I’m sitting here, three whiskeys deep, staring at the flickering screen of reality, trying to wrap my head around the latest madness to claw its way out of the startup swamp—Colossal Biosciences, a Texas-based outfit of genetic alchemists, has done it.

They’ve cracked open the crypt of extinction and dragged out three dire wolves, stitched together from ancient DNA and gray wolf guts, like some biotech Frankenstein on a bender.

Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi—names dripping with myth and HBO swagger—are prowling a 2,000-acre preserve, and I can’t decide if this is the dawn of a new era or the opening act of a horror show.

These lunatics at Colossal, led by a software cowboy named Ben Lamm and a Harvard gene-wizard called George Church, have been cooking this up for years.

They’ve been promising woolly mammoths, those shaggy titans of the Ice Age, but instead, they’ve delivered wolves—big-jawed, snow-white beasts that make you wonder if the La Brea Tar Pits just belched up a time capsule.

The process?

Pure science fiction laced with a shot of hubris: they yanked DNA from dire wolf bones—13,000 years dead—tweaked it with CRISPR like it’s some cosmic typewriter, and stuffed it into gray wolf cells.

How to create a Dire Wolf in 7 easy steps.

Then, with a cloning trick straight out of Dolly the Sheep’s playbook, they turned those cells into living, breathing pups. Twenty genetic edits across 14 genes, they say, to juice up the size, sculpt the face, and paint the fur white as a cocaine blizzard. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to salute the sheer balls of it—or run screaming into the desert.

But here’s the rub, folks: the eggheads outside Colossal’s payroll are howling louder than the wolves.

“Dire wolves?” they scoff, spitting their coffee into their lab coats.

Look at these goons at Wired even lolz what is wrong with you??

“Claim” they made some dire wolves. Show us your wolves Wired, like what did you accomplish this week?

“These are just souped-up gray wolves with a fancy haircut!”

Please skeptics with many paper degrees and no wolves to show for it, stop it already.

See, dire wolves—those real-life monsters that once crunched bison bones like popcorn—split off from gray wolves millions of years ago.

The DNA gap’s wider than the Grand Canyon, and Colossal’s got no complete dire wolf genome to bridge it. They’re working off scraps—a tooth here, a skull there—patching it together like a junkyard hot rod.

Beth Shapiro, their own chief scientist, admits they’re flying half-blind, guessing at what makes a dire wolf dire. The critics call it hype, a “scam” dressed up in fur, but I say it’s something else: a mad, beautiful gamble, like betting your last dime on a three-legged horse.

I can see it now—Lamm and his crew, cackling over vats of bubbling goo, drones buzzing overhead, while these pups grow into 150-pound killing machines.

Romulus and Remus, born last October, and Khaleesi, the latecomer, are already strutting around like they own the joint.

Big, broad heads, thicker coats—sure, they look the part. But will they hunt like their ancestors? Will they take down a moose or just stare at it, confused, like some pampered labradoodle? No one knows, because there’s no dire wolf mom to teach them the old ways. They’re orphans of time, raised by humans who think extinction’s just a puzzle to solve.

And that’s the kicker, isn’t it? Colossal’s not just playing God—they’re playing conservationist.

They’ve cloned red wolves too, those endangered ghosts of the American South, claiming this tech could save species on the brink.

Shapiro shrugs and says, “Maybe we don’t need ancient DNA for that,” but the spotlight’s on the dire wolves, the sexy headliners. It’s a circus act with a purpose—or so they tell us. I’m not buying it whole, but I’m not spitting it out either.

There’s something electric here, a jolt of possibility that could either save the wild or turn it into a petting zoo for billionaires.

Tony Robbins is on board:

The skeptics keep yammering—Vincent Lynch from Buffalo calls it a superficial facelift, not a resurrection. Love Dalen, some Swedish genome guru, says it’s 99.9% gray wolf anyway, and the rest is philosophy. Me?

Joe Rogan is stoked.

I don’t give a damn about the percentages. I want to see these bastards, hear their howls rip through the night, feel the ground shake when they charge. If they’re not dire wolves, they’re still something—hybrids of hope and insanity, prowling a world that’s forgotten them.

Colossal’s got the cash—$10 billion valuation—and the guts to keep pushing. Mammoths are next, they swear, and I’ll be there, shotgun in hand, when those trunks hit the tundra.

For now, though, it’s wolves.

Three of them, locked away in a secret fortress, while the suits and the scientists bicker over what’s real. I say screw the debate—let’s crack a bottle and toast the madness. Colossal Biosciences has lit a fuse, and whether it’s a dud or a detonation, we’re all along for the ride.

Fear and loathing? Hell yes.

But also awe, raw and untamed, like a dire wolf’s snarl echoing through the void. Pass the whiskey—this is just the beginning.