As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, biotech has risen to become the business of the century. And Benchling doesn’t want to miss out on the industry’s cultural moment.
The San Francisco startup announced on Friday it raised $50 million in Series D funds, which it plans to spend on new product features, international expansion and a hiring spree. The 210-person company plans to double the size of its team over the next year and is hiring across all departments, including engineering, IT, product and more. Some of the positions are based in Zurich, Switzerland, where the company aims to open a new office. The company also aims to expand its presence in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific regions.
“As we expand our team and our product, our mission will always remain the same: to accelerate life science R&D,” Roger Pellegrini, marketing manager, wrote in an email to Built In.
Benchling offers a cloud-based platform scientists can use to track, measure and predict the outcomes of their work. Since its launch in 2012, more than 230,000 scientists and 1,000 R&D organizations have used the platform to organize their operations and experimental data sets. As biotech research has grown in complexity, so has adoption of Benchling. The company plans to launch new tools for chemistry and biology researchers later this year.
“A major area of product development for us is building support for chemistry-based R&D and chemically modified biomolecules,” Pellegrini said. “Scientists are beginning to blur the boundaries between biology and chemistry to create completely novel products.”
Over the past year, the company has doubled its number of customers, which operate in industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to fuels to agriculture. The cost for companies to use Benchling can range from thousands to millions of dollars per year, depending on the size of the business.
But right now, the company is offering its platform free of charge to organizations that are working on pandemic testing and research, like the University of California–San Francisco.
The company has also provided a centralized space for scientists’ COVID-19 donation requests, and launched a public resource board where researchers can exchange data on the novel coronavirus, in a move to find a cure.
The Series D round brings total investment in Benchling to $111.9 million, and valuation of the startup to $850 million.
Alkeon led the round, and Spark Capital, Lux Capital, ICONIQ Partners, Thrive Capital, Benchmark and Menlo Ventures participated.
