Benchling announces $100M Series F funding and continued European expansion
Leading R&D Cloud for biotech, now valued at $6.1BN, is doubling down on its European presence
ZURICH, Nov. 18, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Benchling, pioneer of the R&D Cloud powering the biotechnology industry, announces its continued European expansion, following a strong year of growth. The company achieved triple-digit year-over-year revenue growth in the market in its most recent fiscal quarter, with the number of customers in Europe increasing 184% from last year.
This expansion comes as Benchling reveals it has raised $100 million in Series F funding at a $6.1 billion valuation. The round was co-led by new investor Franklin Templeton and existing investor Altimeter Capital, and joined by new investors Tiger Global and Lone Pine Capital, as well as existing investors. Benchling will use the funding to continue expanding in Europe and further develop its cloud-based R&D platform, which accelerates the speed of scientific breakthroughs, helping biotechnology companies across industries to bring the next generation of medicines, food, and materials to market faster.
Benchling's growth is fueled by the rapid rise of biotechnology, one of the world's fastest-growing markets. Modern R&D holds the key to unleashing biotechnology's potential to radically transform our world — scientists must be empowered to discover and develop the next generation of medicines and biologically derived products, and ultimately get them to market faster than ever before.
Benchling's ongoing European expansion is a strategic next step for the business to meet the increasing demand for innovative R&D from its 90+ customers in the region, including Alchemab Therapeutics, bit.bio, Cutiss AG, Galapagos NV, Kolibri, Lesaffre, PetMedix™, Sanofi, Selexis SA, Syngenta, and TATAA Biocenter.
The company's European team is over 60 people today, including leaders with significant experience building and scaling major technology companies. Over the next 12 months, Benchling expects to expand its European headquarters in Zurich and double its headcount in the region across all customer-facing functions, including sales, services, marketing, and support. Benchling was also one of three companies, including Moderna, to be awarded with a 2021 Tell Award, recognised by the Swiss authorities for its significant foreign direct investment in Switzerland.
As biotechnology companies come under increased pressure to deliver breakthroughs, they are turning to modern software to digitise all their scientific processes and centralise their data.
"Biotechnology is rewriting life as we know it. Europe is at the forefront of cutting-edge R&D and we are honored to work with nearly 100 companies there, after establishing a presence in Zurich last year. We are excited to double down our investment in this important market," said Sajith Wickramasekara, CEO and co-founder of Benchling. "Our customers, spanning nearly every major industry, are engineering more effective medicines, nutritious foods, and sustainable crops, materials, and fuels to address humanity's most pressing issues. These challenges are global, so growth outside of the US is a strategic priority for us as we power modern, data-driven, and collaborative R&D."
"Syngenta's work relies on scale because our researchers test hundreds of thousands of seeds in different growth environments. When we discover viable candidates to address grower needs we must rapidly scale up seed stocks to enable testing in labs, greenhouses, and field trials around the world," said Charlie Baxter, Head of Traits, Regulatory, and Product Safety at Syngenta. "Thanks to Benchling, we've said goodbye to paper and our global seeds R&D teams can work together efficiently on a single platform to standardize the development of seed candidates from the lab to the test field. It's allowed us to rethink how we structure much of our work — accelerating new seed products to market."
The next generation of scientists are adopting Benchling across both academia and industry:
- Benchling's R&D Cloud is used by over 600 companies, including some of the world's most innovative biotech companies, including 22 of the 50 largest global biopharma companies.
- The company's community has grown to over 200,000 scientists at more than 7,000 academic and research institutions.
Since announcing its Series E $200M raise in April, Benchling has introduced new capabilities and solutions, including support for early development and RNA therapeutics. The company also hired Salesforce executive Lindsey Irvine as Chief Marketing Officer.
About Benchling
Benchling is the pioneer of the R&D Cloud, software that powers the biotechnology industry. More than 200,000 scientists at over 600 companies and 7,000 research institutions globally have adopted Benchling's R&D Cloud to make breakthrough discoveries and bring the next generation of medicines, food, and materials to market faster than ever before. The R&D Cloud helps these organizations modernize their scientific processes and accelerate collaboration so they can convert the complexity of biology into world-changing results. For more, please visit Benchling.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains express and implied forward-looking statements. All statements in this press release other than statements of historical facts, including our expectations regarding our business strategy, potential market and growth opportunities and our plans for future expansion of operations in the EMEA market, are forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "estimate," "expect," "potential", "intend," "may," "will," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date they were first issued and are based largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, results of operations, business strategy, short-term and long-term business operations and objectives, and financial needs, as well as beliefs and assumptions of management. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including but not limited to our ability to sustain our growth rates, our sales and marketing capabilities, our ability to attract new customers or expand potential customer and sales pipeline, the timing and success of any new features and solutions introduced by us, the effect of uncertainties related to the global COVID-19 pandemic on our business, results of operations, and financial condition, overall economic conditions, and our ability to achieve market acceptance of our solutions. Moreover, we operate in very competitive and rapidly changing environments, and new risks may emerge from time to time. It is not possible for our management to predict all risks, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements we may make. You should not rely upon the forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. The future events discussed in this press release may not occur and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee that future results, levels of activity, performance, achievements, or events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will occur.
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