Benchling is a cloud platform built for biotech R&D - a single, biology-first system of record where scientists design experiments, track samples, manage molecular data, and collaborate. Founded in 2012 out of MIT, it has grown into the operating system for modern life science, used by hundreds of thousands of scientists at companies ranging from startups to the largest biopharma firms, and is now embedding AI agents and predictive models directly into the lab workflow.
Tom Willis, PhD, is a genomics entrepreneur with more than 20 years of company-building experience who became CEO of Arima Genomics in June 2025. A Yale and Stanford physicist turned biotech serial founder, he co-invented Molecular Inversion Probe technology, built two genomics companies from the ground up - ParAllele BioScience (acquired by Affymetrix) and Sequenta (whose ClonoSEQ assay became NCCN-standard for leukemia and lymphoma residual disease testing) - then spent a decade as Venture Partner at Illumina Ventures before stepping in to lead Arima, a company pioneering 3D genomics for cancer diagnostics.