Colossal lands $15 million to restore the woolly mammoth to the Arctic -- and thinks it can birth calves in four to six years.

Colossal hopes to help bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction.

One called Colossal has a different goal: bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction by 2027 using CRISPR, a revolutionary gene-editing technology.

"Our true North Star is a successful restoration of the woolly mammoth, but also its successful rewilding into interbreeding herds in the Arctic," Lamm said.

Colossal hopes its work will draw attention to biodiversity problems and ultimately help fix them.

There are other ways Colossal hopes to help.

Its gene editing technology could artificially add genetic diversity to species with only small surviving populations, Lamm said.

"Our focus is on species preservation and protection of biodiversity right now, not in putting them in zoos," Lamm said.

And it also plans to create detailed genetic descriptions of many endangered species "so we have the recipe if that species does go extinct," Lamm said.

But this isn't government money Colossal is talking about, and Lamm argues that his startup's work complements other conservation efforts.