Benchling Brings In $50M Series D To Advance Biotech R&D

Life sciences research and development platform Benchling closed $50 million in Series D funding led by Alkeon, the company announced Monday.

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New investors Spark Capital, Lux Capital and ICONIQ Partners participated in the San Francisco-based company’s funding round, as well as existing investors Thrive Capital, Benchmark and Menlo Ventures, the company said in a written statement.

The cloud-based software platform has been used by more than 230,000 scientists and 1,000 R&D organizations to centralize large and complex experimental datasets, as well as optimize R&D processes so they can make breakthrough discoveries faster, the company said.

“Benchling has engineered an end-to-end, purpose-built software platform indispensable to life sciences companies leading the charge on global R&D,” Mark McLaughlin, general partner at Alkeon, said in a written statement. “Scientists on the front lines of groundbreaking research leverage Benchling as go-to infrastructure that empowers them to innovate and collaborate at scale, while doing so with unprecedented speed and accuracy.”

Saji Wickramasekara, Benchling founder and CEO, told Forbes that the capital infusion brought the company’s total funding to $114 million at a valuation of $850 million. Prior to this round, the company raised a $34 million Series C round in July 2019, led by Menlo Ventures, according to Crunchbase data.

Benchling plans to use the investment to expand product capabilities and add to its international presence, the company said. Since COVID-19 began last year, Wickramasekara said in a written statement, users were tapping into the platform to develop treatments and vaccines.

“Rapidly solving COVID-19 is just the start of what will solidify this as the century of biotech,” he said.

Illustration: Dom Guzman