Benchling is continuing its European expansion, following a strong year of growth. This expansion comes as Benchling reveals it has raised $100 million in Series F funding at a $6.1 billion valuation.
Context
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.
The investment
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.
Using the funding
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 fuelled by the rapid rise of biotechnology, which is reportedly 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.
Outlook
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.
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.
Official comments
“Biotechnology is rewriting life as we know it. Europe is at the forefront of cutting-edge R&D and we are honoured 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.”
Image credit: Visual Stories
