BenchSci Valuation, Funding & Investors
BenchSci is valued at $34M as of May 2018.
Last BenchSci valuation
$34M
Series A · May 2018
Last BenchSci funding round
$70M
Series D · May 2023
Cumulative funding BenchSci raised
$157M
across 7 funding rounds
Key investors in BenchSci
Inovia Capital
Real Ventures
Golden Ventures
Gradient
500 Global
F-Prime
About BenchSci
BenchSci is an AI platform accelerating biomedical research for pharmaceutical companies and research institutions. Its database annotates antibodies, cell lines, and protocols from millions of publications, predicting experiment outcomes. Used by Pfizer, Roche, and over 4,300 labs worldwide, BenchSci reduces wet-lab failures by 50 percent through searchable experiment histories. Toronto-based and founded in 2015, the company raised funding from F-Prime Capital and Gradient Ventures to expand its knowledge graph.
Founded
2015
HQ
TorontoWebsite
Status
Privately held
Customer focus
B2B
Revenue model
Subscription
Valuation
$34M (May 2018)
BenchSci Valuation
BenchSci is currently valued at $34M, based on its Series A in May 2018.
The $8M round was led by Inovia Capital, with participation from Real Ventures, Radical Ventures, Afore Capital, Gradient, 500 Global and 1 other investor.
BenchSci valuation by funding round
| Date | Stage | Valuation |
|---|---|---|
| May 2018 | Series A | $34M |
BenchSci Funding History
BenchSci has raised a total of $157M across 7 funding rounds.
BenchSci's first fundraising round was a $2M pre-seed round in July 2016. The most recent completed round was a $70M Series D in May 2023.
BenchSci funding rounds
| Date | Stage | Investors | Raised | Valuation | Deal Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2023 | Series D | Generation Investment Management (lead); F-Prime; TCV; Inovia Capital; BDC Capital; Golden Ventures | $70M | - | BenchSci, a Toronto-based AI company founded in 2015, develops solutions for preclinical life sciences R&D, including the ASCEND platform that helps scientists discover biological connections, reduce trial-and-error experimentation by 40%, and uncover novel targets in 22% of key projects. The platform is used by thousands of scientists daily at 16 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and over 4,500 research centers worldwide, serving top customers to accelerate drug discovery and address the industry's 98% failure rate in advancing medicines. With over 400 employees, BenchSci ranked among North America's fastest-growing tech companies by Deloitte. On May 25, 2023, BenchSci closed a $95 million CAD (US $70 million) Series D funding round led by Generation Investment Management, with participation from existing investors Inovia Capital (formerly iNovia), TCV, Golden Ventures, and F-Prime Capital. This all-equity, all-primary round brought total funding to $218 million CAD (US $170 million), following a $63 million CAD Series C in Q4 2021. The capital will expand the ASCEND platform amid a shift from startup to scale-up phase. Between the Series C and D rounds (15 months), BenchSci tripled its revenue, doubled team size from 200 to 400 employees, and added three more big pharma customers, achieving strong traction despite economic headwinds affecting other tech and biotech firms. CEO Liran Belenzon highlighted market validation from largest pharma and biotech players, positioning BenchSci to deploy purpose-built AI at scale in pharmaceutical R&D to solve productivity crises and speed novel medicines to patients. |
| Jan 2022 | Series C | Inovia Capital (lead); TCV (lead) | $50M | - | BenchSci, a Toronto-based AI company specializing in machine learning applications for novel medicine development and drug discovery, raised a $63 million (US $50 million) Series C funding round on January 24, 2022, led by Inovia Capital and TCV, with participation from existing investors including F-Prime Capital, Golden Ventures, Gradient Ventures, and Northleaf Capital Partners. This brought the company's total funding to $123 million. The all-equity primary capital round aims to expedite the expansion of BenchSci's AI-powered software platform, which accelerates research in 16 of the top 20 pharma companies and over 4,500 research centers worldwide, helping with target identification, experiment planning, and clinical trial risk assessment. CEO Liran Belenzon highlighted the platform's role in leveraging breakthrough machine learning to enable faster development of novel medicines, citing confidence from early-adopter global pharmaceutical companies and describing the company's hypergrowth. Inovia Partner Dennis Kavelman emphasized the untapped preclinical R&D market and BenchSci's potential as a category-defining leader to bring life-saving drugs to market faster, noting Inovia's strategy of doubling down on portfolio companies. TCV, known for investments in companies like Airbnb and Spotify, joined as a new investor in this growth-stage bet on Canadian tech. Prior rounds included a $10 million Series A in 2018 led by Inovia (with a May 2018 valuation of $33.52M reported in one source) and a $22 million Series B in 2020. Subsequent funding included a $95 million (US $70 million) Series D in May 2023 led by Generation Investment Management, bringing total funding to $218 million (US $170 million), focused on expanding the ASCEND platform which reduced unnecessary experimentation by 40% for top customers. |
| Feb 2020 | Series B | F-Prime (lead); Real Ventures; Northleaf Capital Partners; Inovia Capital; Gradient; Golden Ventures | $22M | - | BenchSci is a Toronto-based AI company founded in 2015 that provides a software platform mapping disease biology using machine learning trained on over 20 million scientific publications. Its flagship ASCEND platform helps pharmaceutical scientists design better experiments, uncover novel insights, and identify risks earlier in drug discovery, serving 16 of the top 20 pharma companies and over 50,000 scientists at more than 4,500 research centers. The platform has enabled top customers to uncover novel targets in 22% of key projects and reduce unnecessary experimentation by 40%. In early 2020, BenchSci raised CA$22 million in a Series B funding round led by F-Prime Capital, with participation from investors including Golden Ventures, Gradient Ventures, Inovia Capital, Northleaf Capital Partners, and Real Ventures. This round preceded a CA$63 million Series C in 2021 led by Inovia Capital and TCV, a CA$95 million Series D in May 2023 led by Generation Investment Management (with Inovia, TCV, Golden Ventures, and F-Prime), and an additional $70 million Series D tranche in April 2023. Cumulative funding reached CA$218 million by 2023 and over $200 million CAD total, with investors also including Gradient Ventures (Google's AI fund). Traction includes daily use by thousands of scientists and strong adoption among leading pharma and biotech firms, supporting rapid scaling to over 350 employees by 2023. The company aims to bring novel medicines to patients 50% faster by 2025. BenchSci operates in the AI-driven drug discovery space, amid growing investment in biotech AI startups, with its technology accelerating R&D for pharmaceutical clients. |
| Jun 2019 | Series A | Gradient (lead) | $5M | - | BenchSci, a Toronto-based biomedical AI company founded in 2016, develops technology that empowers scientists to run more successful experiments and accelerate drug discovery by providing antibody usage data and AI-assisted reagent selection. The company serves over 26,000 scientists at more than 2,000 academic institutions and 15 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies. On June 25, 2019, Gradient Ventures, Google's AI-focused venture fund, provided additional investment as an extension of BenchSci's Series A round, increasing total funding to CAD $27.2 million (USD $20.5 million). This followed an initial Series A close of $10 million in May 2018 led by Inovia Capital with participation from Real Ventures, Golden Ventures, and Afore Capital, plus earlier pre-seed and seed rounds. The funds supported office and team expansion to meet demand from pharmaceutical companies. |
| May 2018 | Series A | Inovia Capital (lead); Real Ventures; Radical Ventures; Afore Capital; Gradient; 500 Global; Golden Ventures | $8M | $34M | BenchSci raised US$8 million in a Series A funding round on May 2, 2018, led by Inovia Capital with participation from Gradient Ventures, Golden Ventures, Afore Capital, Real Ventures, and Radical Ventures. The funding supported expansion of its AI-powered search engine for biological products, team growth, sales and marketing efforts, and scaling of AI technology for biomedical research acceleration. This followed a $2.5 million seed round led by Golden Ventures in 2017 with Real Ventures. |
| Oct 2016 | Seed | Real Ventures (lead); FounderFuel | $200K | - | - |
| Jul 2016 | Pre-seed | Afore Capital (lead); Golden Ventures (lead); Real Ventures; Radical Ventures; Two Small Fish Ventures; 500 Global; Ontario Centres of Excellence | $2M | - | - |
Who has invested in BenchSci?
15 investors have backed BenchSci across its funding rounds, including Inovia Capital, Real Ventures, Golden Ventures, Gradient, 500 Global and F-Prime.
Lead investors include Generation Investment Management, Inovia Capital, TCV, F-Prime, Gradient and 3 other investors.
BenchSci Investors
| Investor | HQ | Rounds | Role | First check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Montreal | 4 | Lead | Jul 2016 | |
| Montreal | 4 | Lead | May 2018 | |
| Toronto | 4 | Lead | Jul 2016 | |
 San Francisco, CA | 3 | Lead | May 2018 | |
| United States | 2 | Lead | Feb 2020 | |
| Toronto | 2 | Participant | Jul 2016 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 2 | Lead | Jan 2022 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 2 | Lead | Jul 2016 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 2 | Participant | Jul 2016 | |
| Montreal | 1 | Participant | Oct 2016 | |
| Toronto | 1 | Participant | Feb 2020 | |
| Montreal | 1 | Participant | May 2023 | |
| Toronto | 1 | Participant | Jul 2016 | |
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all 15 BenchSci investors. Start Free Trial | ||||
Benchmark 350K+ Funding Rounds and Disclosed VC Valuation Multiples
Sign up to see data on 350K+ funding rounds and disclosed revenue and EBITDA valuation multiples, from seed, through growth stage, to pre-IPO.
Start Free TrialBenchSci Competitors
BenchSci competitors include listed companies like Datrix and Substrate Artificial, and private ones like Talus Bio, Dynamo AI, StrongSuit and mesha.
| Company | HQ | Status | Revenue | EBITDA | Valuation | Revenue Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle, WA | Private | - | - | $31M | - | |
 Italy | Publicly listed | $15M | $1M | $33M | 2.4x | |
| San Francisco, CA | Private | - | - | $35M | - | |
 Spain | Publicly listed | $21M | ($5M) | $36M | 2.0x | |
| San Francisco, CA | Private | - | - | $37M | - | |
| San Francisco, CA | Private | - | - | $31M | - |
BenchSci Public Comps
BenchSci is still privately-owned, but its public comps include J. Molner, Bio-Works Technologies, Genoway, Avilen, Intervacc, Mabion, SoftOx Solutions, ZYUS Life Sciences, MindMaze Therapeutics and Cassava Sciences.
| Last FY | EV/Revenue | EV/EBITDA | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | EBITDA | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | |
| $1M | $1M | 26.2x | - | 34.4x | - | |||
| $6M | ($2M) | 4.8x | - | (17.5x) | - | |||
| $24M | $6M | 1.7x | 1.6x | 7.3x | 9.8x | |||
| $11M | $2M | 3.0x | 2.9x | 15.0x | - | |||
| $2M | ($7M) | 10.5x | 9.8x | (3.2x) | (3.4x) | |||
| $4M | ($14M) | 9.7x | 6.2x | (2.9x) | (5.0x) | |||
| - | ($877K) | - | - | (37.0x) | - | |||
| $290K | ($12M) | 177.7x | - | (4.3x) | - | |||
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all BenchSci competitors and their valuation data. Start Free Trial | ||||||||
Common questions about BenchSci
| When was BenchSci founded? | BenchSci was founded in 2015. |
| Where is BenchSci headquartered? | BenchSci is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. |
| Is BenchSci publicly listed? | No, BenchSci is a private, VC-backed company. |
| What is BenchSci's valuation? | BenchSci was last valued at $34M in its Series A in May 2018. |
| How much funding has BenchSci raised? | BenchSci has raised $157M across 7 funding rounds. |
| What was BenchSci's last funding round? | BenchSci's last funding round was a $70M Series D in May 2023, led by Generation Investment Management. |
| Who are BenchSci's investors? | BenchSci's investors include Real Ventures, Inovia Capital, Golden Ventures, Gradient, F-Prime, Radical Ventures, TCV, Afore Capital, 500 Global, FounderFuel and 5 others. |
| Which companies are comparable to BenchSci? | Companies comparable to BenchSci include Talus Bio, Datrix, Dynamo AI, Substrate Artificial, StrongSuit and mesha. |
See companies similar to BenchSci
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