AI models that predict evolution. AI’s big debt load. Moving backward on defense tech. All that and more in this week’s Prototype. To get it in your inbox, sign up here.

AI is already being used to forecast the weather, stock prices and protein structures. Now Ben Lamm, the co-founder of de-extinction company Colossal, wants to go bigger: building AI models that predict evolutionary changes in whole biological systems.

That’s the goal of Colossal spinoff Astromech, co-founded by Lamm and geneticist George Church, which announced yesterday it had raised a $20 million venture round led by Arch Ventures co-founder Bob Nelsen. The new investment brings the startup’s total funding to $60 million, and values the firm at $3.8 billion.

At the heart of Astromech’s models are the biological datasets that Colossal has collected during its research into how to bring species back from extinction. That provides useful insights into how species have changed over time. For example, where genes are similar between modern elephants and woolly mammoths–and where they aren’t. By working backwards, their models can predict how those genes will change in the future.

That’s not just an arcane question of interest to paleontologists. Understanding how and why genes change as they evolve can help farmers breed better crops, enable pharma companies to find better drugs and assist public health officials in identifying disease threats before they emerge, Lamm told me.

Initially, Astromech is focused on understanding longevity, using its model to map 46 genes associated with longer lifespans, cancer resistance and cell maintenance. The new capital, Lamm says, will be primarily focused on hiring research teams. Because its models are highly targeted for these problems, compute is not as much of an expense as it is for other AI companies, he added.

While Astromech certainly isn’t the only company building datasets to model biological changes, Lamm told me that the data Colossal has collected gives it an edge.........

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