BenchSci – a leader in AI solutions for preclinical life sciences research and development (R&D) – announced a $95 million (US $70 million) Series D funding round led by Generation Investment Management with participation from existing investors iNovia Capital, TCV, Golden Ventures and F-Prime Capital. This most recent funding brings BenchSci’s total funds raised to $218 million (US $170 million).
The funding round will be used to expand the company’s revolutionary AI drug discovery platform, ASCEND by BenchSci – which enables scientists to discover biological connections, dramatically reduce trial-and-error experimentation and uncover risks early. And ASCEND users from BenchSci’s top 10 customers were able to uncover novel targets and disease indications in 22% of key projects and reduced unnecessary experimentation by 40%, contributing to a new era of more efficient, AI-driven drug discovery.
BenchSci’s ASCEND platform enables scientists at every stage of preclinical research, regardless of therapeutic area by turning inaccessible, unstructured, and unstandardized experimental evidence from external and internal data sources into actionable insights. And using a proprietary text and image-based machine learning approach, ASCEND decodes and connects the entire available history of biomedical research, combined with customer experimentation and procurement data, to create an unbiased and objective map of the underlying biology of disease.
This approach helps scientists understand the feasibility of new or existing pursuits and also provides insights on how they can effectively test them and improve translation to clinical trials. And this saves scientists weeks and months of investigation and failed experiment time, expediting the critical scientific conclusions that produce more promising pursuits from the onset. BenchSci’s software is used by 16 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and by over 50,000 scientists working at more than 4,500 leading research centers worldwide.
Launched in 2015, BenchSci has grown to over 400 employees and was recently ranked among the fastest-growing tech companies in North America by Deloitte.
KEY QUOTES:
“Our focus will always be on what will drive the greatest impact for our customers. Thousands of scientists use our platform every day to move their most promising drug discovery projects forward faster. This investment is validation of the incredible work of our team and the traction we have in the market with the largest pharmaceutical and biotech companies in the world. With the industry 98% failure rate advancing medicines to patients in need, we’re grateful to partner with Generation who shares our thesis that purpose built, innovative AI must be deployed at scale within pharmaceutical R&D to solve the productivity crisis and bring novel medicines to patients years faster.”
— Liran Belenzon, CEO and Co-Founder of the Canadian-based BenchSci
“We believe more effective preclinical research is critical to a sustainable healthcare system – drug development is expensive and this cost is only increasing. BenchSci is an example of how AI can support existing drug development by helping scientists focus their research on the most promising areas of science. Previously, a scientist typically had to spend hundreds of hours to understand existing experiments and conclusions. With BenchSci’s models, scientists can find the same answer in minutes, accelerating drug discovery and reducing the time and cost to develop potentially life-saving drugs.”
— Anthony Woolf, Growth Equity Partner at Generation Investment Management
