Enabling over one million scientists to improve research and lab efficiency

Insightful Science, a leading software provider serving the global life sciences community, has announced that it has entered into a transaction to acquire Dotmatics, an industry leading cloud-based scientific R&D data management platform.

By integrating Insightful Science’s software applications into Dotmatics cloud-first enterprise data management solution, the company will provide an end-to-end scientific research platform. This combination further improves laboratory efficiency and accelerates the pace of scientific innovation by facilitating more rapid data access, analysis and exchange between scientists around the world.

Insightful Science is a software company with purpose-built data analysis and bioinformatics applications for life sciences. The company portfolio serves a diverse set of one million scientists in academic, corporate, and government institutions around the world. Examples of products within the Insightful Science portfolio include GraphPad Prism, Geneious DNA data analysis solutions, SnapGene, and other leading R&D solutions.

Dotmatics is an enterprise scientific informatics SaaS provider that is driving the digitalization of laboratory data workflows for scientific discovery and innovation across the life sciences, chemicals and materials industries.

“This announcement signals a significant transformation in the future of software and data management in research labs,”said Thomas Swalla, CEO of Insightful Science. “Together our complementary businesses create an end-to-end cloud-first scientific research platform that stands apart in our collective ability to support data-driven research. We are beyond enthusiastic about the impact we can have on increasing the speed of scientific innovation, and ultimately helping to make the world a healthier, cleaner, and better place to live.”

“The number one challenge for pharmaceutical, biotech and chemical innovation companies today is how to manage the enormous volume — and promise — of data generated in labs,” said Dr Steve Gallagher, Co-founder and CEO of Dotmatics. “This combination allows us to expand investments in our Dotmatics platform and strengthen our brand as a leading enterprise informatics solution provider. We will bring Insightful Science’s leading biologics applications to our customers, further accelerating their discovery processes. In addition, we have the opportunity to bring the Dotmatics cloud and collaboration capabilities to the diverse community of over one million scientists already using Insightful Science tools.”

Digital Transformation to Chart the Course for the Lab of the Future

Scientific research and innovation R&D is in the midst of a pivotal transformation. Scientific knowledge and growth in pharmaceutical drug discovery and chemicals and materials innovation is increasing at a faster pace than ever before. The research process has been transformed from transactional and process driven, to data driven. As a result, scientists require increasingly powerful and integrated informatics tools to analyze ever-more diverse sets of data; and laboratories and companies need better workflow and data management solutions to help scientists harness the power of these insights. Companies that own the cleanest, best annotated data to power their AI analytics and decision making, will be the best placed to be successful in this new paradigm.

Transaction Details

Insightful Science is a privately held portfolio company of Insight Partners, the leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies.

“The combination of these two entities brings an exciting new solution to market,” said Jeff Lieberman, Managing Director at Insight Partners. “This announcement and collaboration is a significant opportunity for the life sciences, chemicals and materials industries. We are incredibly optimistic about the future of the company and its clear path to doing for life sciences and chemical innovation what other market-leading platforms have done in engineering, design, and later-stage drug development.”

Alastair Hill, Co-founder and CIO of Dotmatics added, “Since initial growth equity investment by Scottish Equity Partners (SEP), we have been supported to make incredible progress in scaling our business and driving product innovation. We would like to thank them for their support as we enter the next exciting stage in Dotmatics’ development,and Jefferies for advising on the transaction.”

Evercore served as financial advisor and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP served as legal advisor to Insightful Science on the transaction. Jefferies International Ltd served as advisor to Dotmatics.

Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) is a leading European growth equity firm, investing in enterprise and consumer-focused software and technology companies.

Keith Davidson, Partner at SEP said, “We are pleased to have helped Dotmatics grow into a leading cloud-first scientific R&D data platform. We are excited by the opportunity that lies ahead for the team and wish them every success in the future.”

Subject to the attainment of regulatory clearances, the transaction is expected to close in Q2 of 2021. Until closing, the companies will continue to operate independently.

About Insightful Science

Insightful Science is a life sciences software company that digitally connects researchers to their ideas and data, advancing the discovery process. From developing new personalized and preventive patient treatment solutions to reversing climate change — more than two million researchers at leading life science and biopharma enterprises trust Insightful Science products to make the world a healthier, cleaner, and better place to live. Products within the Insightful Science portfolio were built by prominent scientists, and include GraphPad Prism, Geneious Prime and Geneious Biologics, SnapGene, nQuery, Cytapex, and more.

About Dotmatics Ltd.

Dotmatics is a scientific informatics software and services company that is driving the automation of laboratory workflows for discovery and innovation research - accelerating the journey towards full digitalization and the Lab of the Future.

With a mission to give scientists access to all of their data, all of the time, Dotmatics provides a portfolio of tools for fully automated, end-to-end workflows including data acquisition, knowledge management, data storage, and enterprise querying and reporting. Through these comprehensive solutions, the Company is helping its customers to increase lab efficiency and make better informed decisions driven by all data

Dotmatics’ customers include many of the world’s leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology, contract research, chemicals and materials companies. Insight into the challenges faced by these organizations enables Dotmatics to focus on delivering versatile and intuitive products and services that have potential to turn around the productivity deficit in research and accelerate development of novel drug candidates or products.

Dotmatics was founded in 2005 by two scientists from Merck Pharmaceuticals (MSD). Since then it has built a strong and profitable business with an expert team of over 300 scientists, software developers and engineers, and project managers. The Company is headquartered in the UK with offices in USA, Korea and Japan.