Color, a US-based healthcare provider backed by real estate developer LeFrak, has secured $100m in a series E round more than tripling its valuation to $4.6bn.
Venture capital firm Kindred Ventures led the round, which also featured T Rowe Price, General Catalyst, Emerson Collective and Viking Global Investors. The transaction brings the company’s total funding to $378m.
Founded in 2015 as Color Genomics and drawing on research from University of California, San Francisco and University of Pennsylvania, Color provides healthcare services for employers, governments and school systems, including what it describes as the country’s largest covid-19 testing programme for K-12 schools.
The company will use the series E proceeds to build on its capacity to screen, diagnose and treat populations for a variety of health conditions.
LeFrak has disclosed it is a Color backer but now when it invested. General Catalyst led its $167m series D round in January this year at a $1.5bn valuation, investing with T Rowe Price, Viking Global and unnamed other investors, having reportedly also led a series C round that closed at just under $90m in 2017.
The company had previously raised $45m in a series B round led by General Catalyst in 2016 that included Emerson Collective, Khosla Ventures, 8VC, Susan Wagner and Bono. It came after Khosla Ventures led a $15m series A round the year before that was also backed by various tech executives.
Color’s chief executive Othman Laraki said: “What we have built will serve as a critical piece of public health infrastructure to deliver access to healthcare services to those who need them most.
“We have learned that there is an exponential uptick in people’s ability to use these services as they become simpler and more convenient. Public health should happen where public life happens.”
