Benchling
Benchling is a leading cloud-based platform designed to accelerate innovation in the life sciences. Based in San Francisco, California, the company provides a modern R&D platform that supports biotech R&D, pharmaceutical companies, and academic labs in conducting and managing complex biological research. By combining the power of modern software with the needs of modern science, Benchling is unlocking the power of biotechnology at scale.
As Benchling expands, its role as a core development platform for life sciences becomes more essential, supporting everything from early discovery to process development.
The company is worth billions and continues to grow rapidly, reflecting both its commercial success and its impact on transforming how science is done.
Full name: Benchling, Inc.
Founded: 2012
Founders: Sajith Wickramasekara and Ashu Singhal
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, USA
Incorporation: United States
Industry: Biotechnology software; life sciences R&D informatics platform
At the core of Benchling’s offering is its powerful electronic lab notebook (ELN), a digital replacement for traditional lab notebooks. This tool allows research teams to seamlessly capture, organize, and share scientific data, while ensuring compliance and collaboration. For many biotech companies and pharmaceutical companies, Benchling’s electronic lab notebooks are essential to standardizing their research process.
As life sciences research becomes more complex, Benchling provides tools for aggregating data, analyzing biological data, and managing in vivo studies and gene editing workflows. The platform supports fields like gene therapy, RNA therapeutics, and cell therapy, making it indispensable to a wide range of biotech startups and established life sciences companies.
With Benchling Connect, users can link lab instruments directly to the platform, reducing manual data entry and improving accuracy. This functionality is especially valuable in process development, where reproducibility and precision are critical. Tools like Benchling Bioprocess and Benchling in Vivo extend the platform's capabilities even further, helping scientists collect and analyze data at scale across every stage of the development pipeline.
Benchling doesn't just store data—it automates workflows, centralizes protocols, and supports standardized data capture across teams and geographies. The result is a robust platform for biotech that empowers researchers to do more, faster.
Led by co-founder Sajith Wickramasekara, Benchling has steadily expanded its capabilities and has become one of the most widely adopted and influential platforms in the life sciences industry.
As of recent estimates, the company is worth several billion dollars in annualized revenue, reflecting its central role in transforming drug discovery and life sciences research.
Whether you're looking for a startup job in bioinformatics or building the next breakthrough in bioresearch, Benchling is shaping the digital backbone of biology-driven innovation.
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Contents
Company Overview & Financial Milestones
Founded in 2012, Benchling has grown into one of the most influential software companies in the life sciences space. As a cloud-based development platform, Benchling empowers biotech companies, pharmaceutical firms, and academic labs to streamline research, manage complex biological data, and drive scientific breakthroughs. Its rise reflects the growing demand for modern software tools that can keep pace with the evolving needs of biotech R&D.
This section highlights key financial figures and growth metrics that demonstrate Benchling’s expansion, its impact on the industry, and why it remains a leading platform for biotech innovation.
- Annualized Revenue: As of mid‑2024, Benchling reached approximately $210 million ARR, growing nearly 27% year-over-year
- Latest Reported Revenue: $200 million in 2024, with sustained high growth based on recurring subscription business
- Valuation / Company Worth: Benchling was valued at around $6.1 billion as of its November 2021 funding round; secondary-market estimates place the valuation near that figure as of 2025
- Funding Raised: Total funding sits around $412 million across multiple rounds, including its Series F co-led by Altimeter and Franklin Templeton
Key Features of Benchling
Benchling is a leading cloud-based platform purpose-built for the needs of modern science, serving as a centralized R&D platform for life sciences companies, academic labs, and biotech startups alike. It’s designed to streamline every stage of the research process, from early discovery through process development, enabling faster innovation and better collaboration.
- Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN): Allows researchers to digitally document experiments in an organized, searchable, and compliant format.
- Molecular Biology Tools: Includes DNA editing, plasmid mapping, CRISPR guide design, and other sequence-based functions.
- Inventory Management: Tracks reagents, samples, and materials in the lab with integrated location tracking.
- Workflow Automation: Helps design and manage complex experimental workflows across teams and departments.
- Collaboration: Real-time sharing and commenting on protocols, results, and data between lab members.
- Compliance & Security: Supports audit trails, data integrity, and security features aligned with biotech and pharma standards (e.g., GxP, 21 CFR Part 11).
Who Uses Benchling?
Benchling is trusted by a diverse and rapidly growing community of innovators across the life sciences. Its customers include world-leading life sciences companies, cutting-edge biotech startups and unicorns, and prestigious academic labs and research institutions. From teams pioneering gene therapy and RNA therapeutics to those advancing fundamental science, Benchling empowers organizations that are working to unlock the power of biotechnology.
With a strong reputation for handling data at scale, Benchling helps organizations turn complex biological information into actionable insights, making data a cornerstone of next-generation research. For scientists, engineers, and technologists, Benchling offers a dream startup job; combining cutting-edge software development with meaningful contributions to healthcare and biotech innovation.
- Academic research labs
Academic labs use Benchling as a modern replacement for manual data recording, moving beyond traditional notebooks to its intuitive electronic lab notebook (ELN).
It enables research teams to work collaboratively in real time, ensure consistent and standardized data capture, and efficiently manage structured in vivo study workflows.
Especially beneficial for research in gene editing, RNA therapeutics, and drug discovery, Benchling supports both teaching and experimental science in universities and institutes.
- Biotechnology startups
For biotech startups, Benchling provides a scalable and flexible R&D platform that grows with their science.
Whether working on gene therapy, cell therapy, or CRISPR-based innovation, startups benefit from Benchling’s ability to aggregate biological data, structure experiments, and reduce inefficiencies.
Tools like Benchling Connect and Benchling Bioprocess help automate lab instrumentation workflows, which is critical when speed and reproducibility matter most.
- Pharmaceutical companies
Leading pharmaceutical companies and enterprise-level biotech companies choose Benchling to manage global R&D programs.
Benchling supports process development at scale, helping organizations transition from early discovery through clinical development with unified scientific data systems.
With data at scale, integrated collaboration, and compliance-ready tools, Benchling helps pharma unlock insights faster and get therapies to market more efficiently.
- Synthetic Biology & CRISPR researchers
Teams working in synthetic biology and CRISPR rely on Benchling for design, tracking, and optimization of complex biological constructs.
The platform offers built-in support for designing plasmids, tracking guide RNAs, and integrating experimental results — a must for any cutting-edge biotech R&D program.
Tools like Benchling Bioresearch are ideal for managing experimental variables and storing reproducible biological data.
Why it’s Benchling popular
Benchling replaces paper lab notebooks and scattered spreadsheets with a centralized, cloud-based system. It’s known for its user-friendly interface and powerful integrations, helping streamline R&D and reduce errors.
Benchling has become one of the most widely adopted platforms in the life sciences because it combines the power of modern software with the specific needs of biology-driven research. As a leading development platform, Benchling offers integrated tools that help scientists manage experiments, standardize processes, and eliminate bottlenecks across R&D. It’s more than just a digital notebook—it’s a complete platform for biotech that automates workflows, accelerates discovery, and improves data quality across teams.
A major reason for its popularity lies in how it handles data. Benchling Bioresearch and Benchling In Vivo provide structured environments for capturing, analyzing, and aggregating data, whether from cell lines, animal studies, or molecular designs. This ability to manage data at scale is critical for Benchling’s customers, which include global pharma leaders, biotech startups, and top-tier academic labs. As Benchling expands, it continues to serve an even wider range of users across synthetic biology, gene therapy, and RNA therapeutics.
Benchling’s customers, ranging from global pharmaceutical leaders to agile biotech startups—choose the platform for its ability to streamline R&D and modernize scientific collaboration.
In summary, Benchling’s popularity and growth stem from its ability to handle high volumes of scientific data, support real-world biotech R&D workflows, and deliver a unified development platform that both aggregates data and automates workflows. Its strong annualized revenue, expanding user base (Benchling’s customers), and industry-leading valuation underscore its success—and why working at Benchling is considered a standout startup job in the biotech software space.