According to a US state filing last week, medical robot maker Intuitive Surgical may fire up to 331 employees from its Sunnyvale headquarters facility. By the end of October, the Santa Clara-based corporation will be laying off employees at 1050 Kifer Road, which is adjacent to its main headquarters facility at 1020 Kifer Road.
Impact on Sunnyvale Facility and Workforce Size
The layoffs were caused by Intuitive ceasing operations for weekend and graveyard shifts in one of its industrial units. In order to reduce the final layoff number, the firm stated that it will urge the impacted employees to apply for available positions. The reductions come from a workforce of 15,638 workers, as in the previous year.
Reason Behind the Job Reductions
Up to 212 assembly technicians, 26 manufacturing leaders, 22 trainers, and 22 material handlers are among the impacted staff members. Layoffs have severely impacted medical device and biotech industries as a result of the industry slump that followed the pandemic.
Roles Impacted by the Layoffs
Together, Gilead, Roche, and Cargo Therapeutics have eliminated hundreds of positions in the Bay Area this year. Founded in 1995, Intuitive is well-known for its da Vinci Surgical System, which helps physicians do minimally invasive treatments like heart valve repairs, hysterectomies, and prostate removals. By the end of June, 10,488 da Vinci systems had been installed, according to the business.
Growth in da Vinci Surgical System Installations
The business recorded $2.44 billion in revenue for the second quarter, a 21% increase over the previous year. The second quarter’s net income increased from $527 million in 2024 to $658 million. The outcomes exceeded Zacks Investment Research’s analyst projections. Tuesday’s trading saw Intuitive’s shares rise 1.2%, reaching a market valuation of $172 billion.
Tech and Media Layoffs Continue in 2025
With big companies like Google, Microsoft, and others continuing to reduce their workforces, layoffs in the tech sector are not expected to halt in 2025.
Companies are still cutting employees in an effort to simplify operations, save money, and emphasise automation and artificial intelligence, even though these figures are much lower than the major layoffs that occurred between 2022 and 2023.
Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks layoffs in the industry, reports that 93 organisations have laid off nearly 23,500 tech workers so far this year, and the number is still growing.
Industry-Wide Trend: AI Reshaping the Workforce
Google and Microsoft are apparently contemplating a new round of layoffs, according to the most recent job reduction reports. According to reports, AI-led restructuring and performance-based terminations are part of the corporations’ goals to increase the effectiveness of their personnel.
Similarly, Disney laid off about 200 workers, or nearly 6% of the workforce, from its ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks divisions in March 2025.
According to a media report, the Walt Disney Company restructured in October 2024, closing ABC Signature and combining its operations into 20th Television. It also merged the scripted drama and comedy teams from ABC and Hulu Originals.
Quick
Shots
•Job cuts to be completed by end of
October 2025.
•Company ending weekend and graveyard
shifts in one industrial unit.
•Cuts come from a global workforce of
15,638 employees.
•Biotech & medical device sectors
hit by post-pandemic slowdown.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Benchling.
Biotechnology is leading the most vital scientific revolution worldwide since computing. It’s rewriting life, from the crops we grow to the medicines we take, the food we consume, the household goods we use, and the materials we wear daily.
And research and development are critical factors in unleashing biotechnology’s potential to transform the world radically. However, not many software solutions have kept up with science. Scientists deserve and are in dire need of advanced technology specifically designed for what they do.
It’s when Benchling emerged with a robust, high-performance cloud-based platform to transform biotechnology. Science is changing the world, and Benchling aims to change science. Read on to broaden your knowledge about the company, its founders, founding story, products and solutions, business model, funding, partners, growth, and more.
Benchling – Company Highlights
Company Name
Benchling
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, United States
Sector
Software Development
Founders
Sajith Wickramasekara, Ashutosh Singhal, and Cory li
A cloud-based bioinformatics platform, Benchling delivers innovative solutions for biotechnology research and development. The platform is designed to speed up researchers’ experiments and make them more collaborative.
It serves big and small biotech leaders and innovators at 900+ biotechnology companies, including AGBIOME, ArsenalBio, bit.bio, IGM Biosciences, Beam Therapeutics, Mammoth Biosciences, Bolt Threads, and Verve Therapeutics, developing new medicines, foods, crops, and materials. Over 200,000 scientists across Fortune 500 companies, academic institutions, and startups trust the company.
Benchling – Industry
Benchling is a part of the software development industry involving designing, developing, and implementing software applications for various industrial uses. The global software development market is forecasted to grow from $260.79 billion in 2022 to $915.96 billion in 2027, at a growth CAGR of 28.6%.
The increasing demand for customized applications in several industries is the primary factor driving the growth of the software development market. Leading industry players include Azure, Google Cloud Platform, GitHub, IBM Corporation, Salesforce, and Oracle Corporation.
Sajith Wickramasekara, Ashutosh Singhal, and Cory Li are the Co-founders of Benchling.
Sajith Wickramasekara
Sajith Wickramasekara – Co-founder and CEO, Benchling
Sajith Wickramasekara went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He worked as Research Assistant at Duke University Medical Center and Liquidia Technologies. Sajith is the co-founder and CEO of Benchling.
Ashutosh Singhal
Ashutosh Singhal – Co-founder, Benchling
Ashutosh Singhal completed his B.S. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He interned as a Software Engineer at Google and worked as an Undergraduate researcher at MIT CSAIL. In addition to Benchling, Ashutosh co-founded Hotspots.io. Moreover, he is an ex-Software Engineer of Twitter and the current President of Benchling.
Cory Li
Cory Li – Co-founder, Benchling
Cory Li earned a B.S. degree in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He interned as a Software Engineer at Venuetastic and co-founded Benchling. Cory held Benchling’s co-founder position till 2015. Currently, he is the CEO at Spellbrush.
Benchling is a 900+ person team.
Benchling – Startup Story
Benchling was founded by Sajith Wickramasekara, Ashutosh Singhal, and Cory Li in 2012 at MIT when they realized the need for modern technology and tools to enable their scientific research. At that time, not much software was available to support biological research. As a result, scientists used to record their output in spreadsheets and paper lab notebooks, making collecting and referring back to data difficult.
Therefore, the co-founders created their software, Benchling, while keeping modern science and collaboration in mind. After incorporating the company, Sajith recruited a team with software and biology backgrounds.
Its move into early development was enabled by three innovations in 2021. The company launched the Benchling Validated Cloud solution in January 2021, expanded its Workflow application, and launched structured templates. Benchling made an open-source library of lab instruments and data converters available to the scientific community for free.
Benchling – Mission and Vision
Benchling’s mission is to unlock the power of biotechnology by supporting customers in getting their breakthrough products to market and milestones faster.
Benchling – Business Model
Previously scientists used tools that took about 24 hours to hunt down information across scattered sources. Benchling brought down that time to 10 seconds. The cloud-based unified platform for scientific data enables customers to design DNA while following the approach in three axes- automation, centralization, and standardization.
With centralized data in one location, standardized data conforming to a pre-defined data shape, and automated data capturing as experiments are performed, Benchling unlocks the ability to answer scientists’ new unanswerable questions. Moreover, the platform leverages machine learning to automatically identify bottlenecks in the research and development process and generate scientific analysis.
Benchling – Revenue Model
Benchling offers multiple packages for industry, startups, and academics.
For Industry, the company allows subscribing to ‘Starter,’ ‘Essentials,’ ‘Performance,’ and ‘Benchmark’ packages. When it comes to Startups, it provides a ‘Benchling for Startups’ package. And ‘Academics’ package allows users to join a community of 200,000+ scientists for free.
Benchling – Products and Services
Bechling’s product line includes a wide range of offerings:
The Benchling R&D
Cloud
Notebook
Registry
Inventory
Molecular Biology
Workflows
Studies
Validated Cloud
Benchling for Lab Automation
Configuration
Furthermore, the company’s solutions comprise Biopharmaceutical, Antibodies and Proteins, Industrial Biotech, Agritech, Cell and Gener Therapy, RNA Therapeutics, and Bioprocess and Bioanalytical Development.
Benchling – Challenges Faced
A decade ago, most investors were not excited about biotechnology and, thus, were not scrambling to fund digital notebooks in the cloud, making Benchling’s initial days difficult.
Benchling – Funding and Investors
Benchling has undertaken 8 funding rounds and raked $411.9 million. Its latest funding round – Series F Round, was conducted on November 17, 2021, and secured $100 million. 22 investors fund the company, including Lone Pine Capital, Franklin Templeton Investments, Altimeter Capital, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, and Alkeon Capital.
Date
Round
Number of Investors
Money Raised
Lead Investor
November 17, 2021
Series F
4
$100 million
Franklin Templeton Investments, Altimeter Capital
April 14, 2021
Series E
12
$200 million
Sequoia Capital Global Equities
May 28, 2020
Series D
7
$50 million
Alkeon Capital
July 24, 2019
Series C
5
$34.5 million
Menlo Ventures
June 14, 2018
Series B
3
$14.5 million
Benchmark
October 3, 2016
Series A
2
$7 million
Thrive Capital
April 16, 2015
Seed Round
5
$5 million
Andreessen Horowitz
February 20, 2014
Seed Round
2
$900K
–
Benchling – Mergers and Acquisitions
Benchling acquired Overwatch Research on February 24, 2022.
Benchling – Growth
In April 2021, Benchling recorded triple-digit annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth for the fourth year. A few months later, in November 2021, the company reportedly grew approximately 400% over the last 4 years. It doubled its headcount from 2020 to 2021 with 500+ employees and its post-money valuation stood at $6.1 billion in 2021.
As of 2022, Benchling is estimated at $100+ million ARR, growing approximately 100% and with 169% net retention. Moreover, its annual revenue in 2022 was around $280.2 million.
Benchling – Marketing Strategies
Now that scientific R&D is incredibly complex, product demos are the best way to familiarize Benchling’s market with the idea of using software to simply R&D. Therefore, Benchling developed a Webinar content marketing strategy. The company now runs 3-4 webinars each quarter. The webinars rank among Benchling’s top three channels for account engagement in 2022.
Benchling for Academics: Company Overview and Demo
Benchling – Partners
Here is the list of Benchling’s partners:
Astrix
Celito
DigitalRadius
ITWorx
Karechem Consulting
Sware
Zifo
Wega
Propharma
Benchling – Awards and Achievements
Benchling received many accolades from renowned institutions:
Best Workplaces 2021 by Inc.
2021 Tell Award
Named among the Best-Led Companies of 2021 by Inc.
Recognized as one of the Best Midsize Companies to Work for in the Bay Area 2021 by Built In.
America’s Best Startup Employers 2021 by Forbes.
Benchling – Competitors
Some main competitors of Benchling are as follows:
SciNote, LLC
LabWare
LabVantage Solutions
Labguru
FAQs
What does Benchling do?
A cloud-based bioinformatics platform, Benchling delivers innovative solutions for biotechnology research and development. The platform is designed to speed up researchers’ experiments and make them more collaborative.
Who are the founders of Benchling?
Sajith Wickramasekara, Ashutosh Singhal, and Cory Li are the Co-founders of Benchling.
Who are the main competitors of Benchling?
Some main competitors of Benchling are as follows:
