Anthropic just closed its latest funding round, securing $3.5 billion and pushing its post-money valuation to $61.5 billion, the company confirmed to CNBC. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Cisco Investments, Fidelity Management & Research […]

The post Amazon-backed AI startup Anthropic hits $61.5B valuation after $3.5B funding round first appeared on Tech Startups.

• There are multiple ways to get through airport security quicker, and we've tried most of them.
• Clear makes the security lines much quicker at some airports.
• TSA PreCheck, however, has the added benefit of a less stressful security process.

Earlier in my career, I worked for big multinational companies, often in global roles requiring extensive domestic and international travel. One year I took 36 flights visiting nine countries on four different continents.

My husband also travels a lot for work, and we like to take family vacations whenever we can.

Between the two of us, we've tried several different ways to skip the line at airport security. Here are our top three favorite methods.

TSA PreCheck is hard to beat.

Available at more than 200 airports across the US, TSA PreCheck is consistently one of the fastest ways to get through airport security.

Depending on which provider you go through, the five-year membership costs between $77 and $85, and renewal rates are $59 to $78.

My husband has TSA PreCheck and raves about it.

Beyond accessing a shorter line — usually a wait time of no more than 10 minutes — there's an added benefit of keeping your shoes and light jackets on and not having to remove liquids or laptops from your bags.

It's nice to avoid the post-security scramble of grabbing all of your stuff out of the bins and putting your jacket back on while trying not to forget anything.

Clear saves me time.

Clear is a biometric screening service in which members scan their eyes and fingerprints at a pod to be escorted to the front of the security line.

Memberships cost $200 a year, and the service is available at 59 airports across the US. As a bonus, some big stadiums and concert venues also use it.

It may not be available everywhere, but it suits my travel needs pretty well.

Because I live in the Chicago area and write about Disney World, O'Hare International and Orlando International are two of my most frequently visited airports. Both have Clear, which saves me a ton of time — the lines can get hectic in both cities, especially during popular travel days.

I've raced my husband in the Clear line at Orlando to see if it's faster than TSA PreCheck. I almost always get to the scanners first.

However, he usually makes up some of the time by not having to take off his shoes or remove items from his bag.

Flying business or first class has its benefits.

In addition to lounge access, complimentary food and drinks, and better seats, flying business or first class often includes a special security line.

At busy airports, this saves a lot of time and stress.

I've flown business class a few times for work, but these days, I have a much stricter personal travel budget. That said, I think upgrading flights, particularly long international ones, is a great use of airline miles.

I've done a 22-hour flight from Hong Kong to Chicago in coach and would happily save up points to never do it again.

Overall, line-skipping perks are usually worth it.

Waiting in line is just part of most airline travel. If you're looking for the absolute fastest way to avoid that, I think investing in Clear and bundling a membership with TSA PreCheck is probably your best bet.

There are surely other ways to skip the security line — Global Entry, premier airline status, and random free upgrades, to name a few.

However, regardless of which one works best for you, I think they're almost always worth it. Making a travel day even just a little less stressful is pretty priceless.

• Colossal Biosciences is aiming to revive extinct species like the woolly mammoth.
• The startup has raised over $400 million to fund its de-extinction and conservation missions.
• Its founder and CEO, Ben Lamm, told BI about the potential revenue streams the startup is exploring.

How can a startup provide a return on investment from bringing the woolly mammoth back from the dead?

Ben Lamm, the CEO and cofounder of Colossal Biosciences, the startup developing "de-extinction technology," says the real returns are in the discoveries you make along the way.

The startup has raised over $400 million from investors for its headline missions of reviving extinct species and conservationism.

But in the same way that the space race gave us ancillary technological innovations like GPS and artificial limbs, Lamm says that Colossal Biosciences' mammoth moonshot could spur monetizable advances in biotech.

"There's so much that goes into humans landing on the moon," he told Business Insider. "Well, the same thing goes for de-extinction — you have to build computational biology, cellular engineering, stem cell reprogramming, genetic engineering, monoclonal screening, and embryology."

Some of those technologies could be "so powerful," said Lamm, that the startup is exploring spinning out technologies in areas like longevity, human healthcare, and plastic degradation.

But first, the startup must find a way to revive an animal that went extinct 4,000 years ago.

A mammoth task

So, how does one bring back an extinct animal?

Lamm told BI that the Texas-based startup is taking the opposite approach to Jurassic Park, in which fictional scientists use frog DNA to fill in the gaps in dinosaur DNA that have degraded over time.

Instead, Colossal Biosciences starts with the closest living relative to the woolly mammoth, the Asian elephant.

The startup then uses AI to analyze samples of woolly mammoth DNA, including some well-preserved samples from Alaska and Siberia, ranging from "about 3,500 years old to about 700,000 years old," Lamm said.

That helps Colossal "understand what makes a mammoth a mammoth" before the startup engineers those genes into an Asian elephant cell, Lamm said. In other words, it would be like adding dinosaur genes to frogs, rather than using frogs to fill in dinosaur DNA gaps.

"It's like reverse Jurassic Park," Lamm said.

Colossal is aiming to bring back a woolly mammoth calf, born to a surrogate elephant mother, by late 2028.

On the path to reviving the mammoth, the startup this week announced a new breakthrough in multiplex genome engineering: the birth of a "colossal woolly mouse." The process involved engineering mice so they exhibited mammoth-like qualities, such as thicker fur, that would enable them to adapt to cold environments, Colossal Biosciences said.

"It is an important step toward validating our approach to resurrecting traits that have been lost to extinction and that our goal is to restore," Beth Shapiro, the chief science officer at Colossal Biosciences, said in a Tuesday press release.

Startups find a way — to make money

Beyond engineering ancient DNA, Lamm said that the company's ambition — and thesis for its investors — had always been to spin out research and technology cases with broader applications, like human healthcare.

Launched in 2021, Colossal Biosciences has attracted a slew of high-profile investors, including celebrities such as Chris Hemsworth and Paris Hilton, as well as firms including At One Ventures and Draper Associates.

Its most recent $200 million round, led by TWG Global, brings the startup's total funding to $437 million — at a valuation of $10.2 billion.

Colossal's first spinout company was Form Bio, which raised $30 million to help scientists manage large datasets. Its second spinout company, Breaking, focuses on synthetic biology to tackle the issue of plastic degradation — and raised a fresh $10.5 million last year.

"It's fun for our investors, who get a ride along with all this other stuff," said Lamm.

'It's kind of terrifying'

Alongside its de-extinction technology, Colossal is creating tools meant to help conservation efforts for species that still roam the planet.

Depending on the severity of the climate crisis, the world could lose up to 27% of vertebrae species by 2100, a European Comission forecast from 2022 said.

"We need new tools in the fight against biodiversity loss," Lamm told BI. "It's kind of terrifying."

The company says it provides conservation technology, which it calls "de-extinction toolkits," to its 48 partners, which include the charities Save the Elephants and Re:wild. These include breeding programs that help preserve endangered species, especially those threatened by zoonotic diseases, its website states.

One potential revenue stream is offering "nature credits." Similar to carbon credits, the idea is that companies would buy into nature-positive commitments, which Lamm says could become "long-term annuity streams."

Although speculative — Lamm didn't share a timeline — it could offer Colossal a huge opportunity in the wider carbon credits market.

"While we believe there's a massive ecological impact in rewilding, just to be capitalistic for a second, we think that we'll make billions of dollars in annuities off of having animals healthy back in the wild now," he added.

Another potential income stream for the startup is ecotourism. Colossal says it's in discussions with governments over potential "nine-figure" contracts. However, reviving one mammoth is the startup's priority before it can entertain the idea of a Jurassic Park-style venture.

Trillion-dollar ambitions

Colossal has plans to open its flagship lab this year — and a slew of milestones it aims to hit.

Armed with its fresh funding, the startup plans to examine other avian and mammalian species it hopes to revive. Colossal already plans to bring back the dodo.

The startup is also developing an artificial womb to gestate mammoths and other species, such as northern white rhinos and polar bears. By 2026, the company's artificial womb team hopes to birth a mammal ex-utero.

Lamm is bullish about the upstart's growth trajectory.

"We believe this is a trillion-dollar company," he said. "And we believe this company will potentially have more impact than many other companies have had on the planet."