Incumbent acquisitions build lab software moats
Benchling
This is how incumbents turn fragmented point tools into a moat around the full lab and clinical workflow. Dassault did not buy Medidata just to add one software product, it bought a clinical trial system that let it extend from research and design into patient studies and commercial operations. Thermo Fisher used deals like Core Informatics to add cloud data management to its instrument and lab software stack, so customers could buy one broader system instead of stitching together newer vendors.
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The Medidata deal was large and strategic. Dassault paid about $5.8B in 2019 and said the acquisition would make life sciences its second largest core business, while giving it a more complete path from discovery through clinical testing and commercialization.
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Thermo Fisher folded Core Informatics into a wider digital science push. In its April 26, 2017 results, Thermo Fisher described Core Informatics as a cloud based platform that strengthened its digital science strategy, showing the logic was not just data storage, but keeping informatics tied to Thermo instruments and lab workflows.
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This matters for Benchling because incumbents can defend accounts by bundling software with adjacent systems they already sell, including instruments, services, validation, and enterprise procurement relationships. Benchling counters with a cloud native system that starts where scientists work every day, in notebooks, sequence design, registry, inventory, and workflows, then expands across the R&D org.
The next phase is likely more platform consolidation around scientific data systems. Large incumbents will keep buying missing workflow layers to close product gaps, while Benchling pushes upward from day to day lab work into regulated development and manufacturing. The winner will be the vendor that becomes the system where scientific data is created first, not just stored later.