November 11, 2020
R-Zero, a biosafety company dedicated to developing the most effective hospital-grade technologies to reduce the spread of infectious disease, today announced $15M in new capital and remarkable business momentum, just three months after first introducing its germicidal UV device.
R-Zero notes the $15M Series A round of financing was led by DBL Partners, one of the largest pioneering and leading impact investors, with participation from Bedrock Capital and HAX / SOSV. As part of the round, Ira Ehrenpreis, Managing Partner at DBL Partners, has joined R-Zero’s Board of Directors. This new capital will allow R-Zero to further accelerate production and deployment of its flagship IoT UV-C system to meet strong demand, while continuing development of new product innovations that will further contribute to a new standard public health and safety.
“In today’s world, nothing is more important than the health and safety of our families, fellow employees and frontline workers, but unfortunately the cost of effective disinfection protocols has been prohibitively expensive,” said Ira Ehrenpreis, Managing Partner at DBL Partners and R-Zero board member. “Through innovation and cost reduction, R-Zero democratizes access to safety for businesses and communities alike. In much the same way as companies in other critical industries have experienced exponential growth by unlocking new technologies and attracting a new breed of entrepreneurial talent, R-Zero is similarly poised to benefit from impact investment dollars. The goal is to modernize the disinfection space with its breakthrough technology, aimed at addressing the critical societal issues around trust, appropriate health protocols, and the need for safer spaces.”
R-Zero was founded in the early stages of the pandemic by co-founders Ben Boyer, Grant Morgan and Eli Harris after recognizing a unique opportunity to revolutionize the $20B+ infection prevention industry and help businesses increase employee and customer safety. Until now, UV-C disinfection technology has been limited to hospitals, where costs can range between $60,000 and $125,000 per unit and are too cumbersome to integrate efficiently and effectively for mainstream organizations and consumers. Alternatively, R-Zero’s flagship germicidal UV device, Arc, successfully offers the same or better safety and efficacy as the systems used in hospitals, at a fraction of the price (via hardware-as-a-service subscription). BLE, LTE-M and GPS connectivity also share usage data in real time, providing organizations with an auditable trail of disinfection activities, and making a previously invisible process visible for the first time — a step forward in the safe reopening of common spaces.
Results from recent independent lab tests show Arc successfully destroys over 99.99% of pathogens (including coronavirus, E coli, MRSA, and feline calicivirus) in a 1,000 sq ft space, in under 7 minutes, thereby validating its ability to significantly decrease pathogenic risk across a variety of environments. And while Arc’s high efficacy makes it an ideal option for clinical settings, the product is also designed to work seamlessly in a wide range of environments found outside of a hospital, including schools, restaurants, hotels, senior care facilities, office spaces (and CRE), manufacturing environments, professional athletic facilities and more.
“In a time when an invisible microorganism is causing unprecedented human suffering and economic destruction on a truly global scale, businesses everywhere need solutions that enable them to reopen doors and keep them open safely,” said Grant Morgan, CEO and Co-founder of R-Zero. “As pathogens have evolved, the tools we use to combat them have not. The need for innovation around how we create safer spaces has never been more urgent and apparent. We see an opportunity to modernize the infection-prevention industry by building upon proven science and applying intelligent hardware, easy-to-use software, and data science, to restore consumer trust and stop the spread of infectious disease, now and forever.”
Now, just six months after the company’s inception, organizations of all shapes and sizes recognize R-Zero as a safe and effective way to resume operations safely and restore trust. As such, R-Zero’s innovative UV-C technology is actively enabling safety across a large number of school campuses, more than one million square feet of office space, athletic facilities of professional sports teams, neighborhood and Michelin star restaurants, hotels and more.
In addition to establishing a new standard of trust and safety for businesses and consumers in the COVID-19 era, the company recognizes that this pandemic will ultimately have a larger impact on every aspect of modern culture and how the world looks at infectious disease. From this point forward, businesses around the globe will be putting infection prevention and environmental safety at the forefront of their day-to-day operations, making technologies like UV-C a standard protocol necessary to stop the spread of new infectious diseases, in addition to the seasonal flu, norovirus, E.coli, the common cold and more, all of which impact tens of millions of Americans every year.
