Inc.
Astromech is betting AI can do for biology what forecasting did for weather: use 3.8 billion years of evolution to predict what comes next.
This AI Company Is Using 3.8 Billion Years of Evolution to Predict the Future
Author: Eli Lippman
Ben Lamm has made a habit of building companies around ideas that sound a little crazy when you first hear them. Lamm, the serial entrepreneur behind Colossal Biosciences, has teamed up again with geneticist George Church to build Astromech, an AI company attempting to turn 3.8 billion years of evolution into something businesses have long had for weather, markets, and consumer behavior: a forecasting system.
Investors clearly see potential. Astromech has raised a new round of funding that values the company at $3.8 billion—a fitting and ironic milestone for a startup building AI models informed by 3.8 billion years of evolutionary history.
But what makes Astromech interesting isn’t simply the valuation. It’s the way Lamm is thinking about the business opportunity surrounding biology.
“We are building an algorithmic prediction solution,” Lamm says. “Think of it like the weather—a complex system that humanity can predict due to specific technology and data sets. We are building the same for biology with evolutionary data.”
Turning evolution into a prediction engine
The concept is ambitious. Astromech combines genomic, evolutionary, and functional data to study how living systems have changed over time. Its AI models can then use those patterns to forecast how a genome, pathogen, or population could change next, where vulnerabilities might emerge, and what biological mechanisms are driving those changes.
In other words, Lamm isn’t building AI simply to analyze biology. He wants to use it to anticipate biology.
That distinction could create opportunities across pharmaceuticals, drug discovery, pandemic preparedness, and synthetic biology. Rather than waiting for a biological problem to emerge and then reacting, companies could potentially identify risks earlier.
What nature teaches about living longer
One of Astromech’s first areas of focus is longevity, and it’s a good example of Lamm’s approach.
Traditional longevity research often studies individual genes or species over long periods. Astromech wants to look across the whole tree of life at once. The company is currently tracing 46 longevity-associated genes through evolutionary history, looking for clues in animals that have developed unusual resistance to aging and disease.
Consider bowhead whales, which can live more than 200 years. Or Brandt’s bats, tiny mammals that can survive for decades. Or other species that have evolved unusual defenses against cancer and other diseases.
“We’re only beginning to understand what nature and other species can teach us about aging,” Lamm says. “When you can look across species and billions of years of evolution to understand why some biological systems are more resilient than others, you start asking really interesting questions about human health and longevity.”
There is, of course, an enormous gap between finding evolutionary patterns and reliably predicting what biology will do next. Lamm doesn’t pretend otherwise.
“The goal isn’t perfect prediction on day one,” he says. “It’s about getting ahead of biology.”
Building the market before it exists
That may also explain what makes Astromech such a fascinating entrepreneurial bet. Lamm isn’t waiting for science to provide a perfectly defined market and then building a company around it. He’s trying to build the infrastructure that could help create the market itself.
If it works, Astromech won’t just be able to explain what happened during 3.8 billion years of evolution. It may help businesses figure out what biology does next.
Credits: TCA, LLC.