Throughout the pandemic, the city of San Francisco has acted as an example for many other major metropolitan hubs. The city by the bay led the way with early shelter-in-place orders and mask mandates while healthtech leaders joined forces with local governments to expand testing efforts in the Bay Area and beyond.
Last March, San Francisco-based healthtech company Color Genomics threw its hat into the COVID-19 testing ring with a newly opened lab in Burlingame. The company launched its testing site with a near-term goal of performing 10,000 tests per day with a lab turnaround time of 24 hours.
Color is now powering the state of California’s COVID-19 testing capabilities and processing up to 150,000 tests daily. The company announced Monday that it secured $167 million in a Series D round to advance its efforts and further expand testing nationwide.
The fresh investment brings the unicorn’s valuation to nearly $1.5 billion, according to the company.
“We are building the rails for a national technology-based public health infrastructure,” Color CEO Othman Laraki said in a statement. “The inability to deliver basic healthcare services during the biggest health crisis of our lifetime is a direct consequence of the lack of a public health delivery model. Public health does not only mean a government-funded model.”
The round, led by General Catalyst, will be used to help the company scale as the pandemic continues and the nationwide demand for testing grows. As part of its growth efforts, the company will also look to expand the size of its team. Color is now hiring for dozens of open positions in marketing, operations, finance, engineering and more.
“A modern public-health infrastructure should enable all of the stakeholders in the health of large populations — including governments, employers, and schools — to support the essential health needs of the people they serve,” Laraki continued.
Moving forward, the company plans to roll out vaccine delivery systems to state and local governments, employers, and higher education institutions, and it has partnered with more than 100 employers and universities so far.
“By investing in the technology that ensures easy and affordable access to healthcare, we’re creating the infrastructure that will serve us for decades to come,” Laraki said.
Color has raised $278 million in financing to date, according to the company.
