BenchSci Analytics Inc. became one of Canada’s most promising and heavily funded startups by using artificial intelligence to help pharmaceutical giants cut time and costs from the drug discovery process.
Now the Toronto company is turning to AI to slash its own costs. Since May, BenchSci has cut 23 per cent of staff – about 83 jobs – as it goes all-in on adopting generative AI to do work formerly done by humans, the company said in an e-mail.
CEO Liran Belenzon signalled BenchSci’s commitment to generative AI in a July blog post. “As I often remind my team, those who fail to embrace AI risk being left behind – not by the technology itself but by peers who have mastered it,” he wrote. The company this year “shifted to become an AI-first company, which has become our guiding principle. Before adding new people or processes, we ask: ‘Could AI do this?’”
In the past two weeks alone, BenchSci cut its software engineering ranks to about 100 people, a 20-per-cent reduction, Mr. Belenzon said in an interview. It has rolled out company-wide tools including Gemini for Google Workspace and NotebookLM, and is using AI to automate repetitive workflows in its hiring practices and otherwise using AI to streamline operations and boost efficiencies.
“Ultimately, the goal is pretty straightforward: become more efficient and give our team the tools they need to be successful,” the memo states.
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BenchSci previously cut its work force by 17 per cent in early 2024 in response to economic conditions and concerns over how the availability of generative AI tools like ChatGPT would affect its business.
As The Globe and Mail reported recently, several companies are pushing faster to adopt generative AI tools internally to increase productivity and save costs.
Tech CEOs in particular are worried about the competitive threat posed by new startups that can grow faster with fewer employees and less funding than in the past, thanks to generative AI tools. These applications can write computer code, make software prototypes, draft documents and reports, and review legal contracts, among other chores.
Advancements in AI agents, which can complete a series of tasks in one shot, are also opening up new opportunities to automate workflows.
Canadian tech companies such as League Inc. and Geotab Inc. are now requiring that employees use AI tools and are incorporating their usage into employee performance reviews. Other companies are trying to avoid bringing in new employees by getting more work done with AI instead. Vancouver business intelligence software provider Klue Labs Inc. let 40 per cent of its employees go in June in order to stay competitive in the AI era.
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Mr. Belenzon told The Globe and Mail his generative AI push was inspired by Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, who told his employees in a memo in April that using AI effectively “is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify.” Mr. Lütke further instructed that teams should only ask for more staff or resources after demonstrating they couldn’t get what they wanted done by using AI.
Mr. Belenzon said the staff cut is not related to any business challenges, noting that BenchSci recently hired serial U.S. technology entrepreneur John Jackson as chief technology officer and Peter Grandsard, former Amgen associate vice president of research, as senior vice-president of strategy. The company also added Pfizer’s former chief scientific officer Mikael Dolsten to its board two weeks ago. BenchSci is “growing and the business is strong and doing well” and set to announce significant developments in the coming months, the CEO said.
BenchSci, founded in 2015 by Mr. Belenzon and three others who met through the Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Toronto, has raised more than $215-million to date, backed by American investors including former U.S. vice-president Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, private and public markets investment giant TCV, Google-backed Gradient Ventures and F-Prime Capital Partners, which is affiliated with fund giant Fidelity’s founding Johnson family. Canadian investors include Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, Golden Ventures and Real Ventures.
BenchSci acts as an AI co-pilot for medical researchers, using AI to rapidly peruse millions of scientific publications to quickly determine which antibodies and reagents would be best to use in early experiments. More than half of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies are BenchSci clients.
