Vivid Dx Raises $15M to Help Hospitals Confront One of Modern Medicine's Most Urgent Threats: Drug-Resistant Infections

• As antimicrobial resistance accelerates, when every hour can matter, faster diagnostics can help clinicians get patients on the right antibiotics sooner
  
• Vivid Dx's direct-from-blood platform uses light and AI to identify dangerous pathogens, aiming to move infectious disease care from broad-spectrum empiric therapy to targeted treatment
  
• Keith O'Neill appointed as CEO to lead Vivid Dx through clinical validation and toward commercialization, drawing on 25 years of international experience advancing healthcare innovation

OXFORD, England, July 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Vivid Dx, a precision diagnostics company transforming pathogen detection and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) testing, today announced $15 million in seed financing co-led by Oxford Science Enterprises and Cedars-Sinai Intellectual Property Co., with participation from Jameel Investment Management Company and additional strategic investors. The company also announced the appointment of scientist and diagnostics executive Keith O'Neill as chief executive officer to lead its next phase of clinical and commercial development.

When a patient may have sepsis, every hour matters. Hospitals often have to wait days to learn which pathogen is causing the infection and which antibiotics are most likely to work. During that window, clinicians are forced to treat without complete information, often relying on broad-spectrum antibiotics that may not work against drug-resistant infections. This delay is a major public health issue: researchers estimate antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could contribute to 39 million deaths globally between 2025 and 2050. As hospitals face tighter antibiotic stewardship requirements and growing pressure to protect last-line therapies, faster diagnostics are becoming essential to giving patients the right treatment sooner while helping slow the spread of resistance.

Rapid infectious disease diagnostics have long faced a difficult challenge: hospitals need faster answers, but those answers also need to be accurate, broad enough to guide treatment, and practical for clinical workflows. Vivid Dx is addressing that challenge by applying AI/ML and advanced sample preparation to Raman spectroscopy, a validated technology with the capability to read biochemical signatures from individual pathogen cells. By combining direct-from-blood pathogen isolation, proprietary Raman spectral databases, and AI-powered signal interpretation, Vivid Dx's platform is designed to identify pathogens and support phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) directly from blood, with the goal of reducing testing timelines from days to hours.

For hospitals, those earlier insights could help clinicians move from broad-spectrum empiric therapy to targeted treatment sooner, potentially reducing ICU stays, lowering treatment costs, and improving patient outcomes. Faster, more precise treatment decisions could also reduce unnecessary antibiotic exposure, an important factor in slowing the evolution of AMR.

"For decades, clinicians treating serious infections have had to wait too long for the information needed to guide antibiotic treatment. The biggest delay in today's workflow happens before many diagnostic systems can even begin: clinicians are waiting for culture," said Keith O'Neill, incoming chief executive officer of Vivid Dx. "Our goal is to move those answers closer to the moment a blood sample is taken. The company has built strong technical foundations, and my focus will be advancing that work through clinical validation and toward a platform that clinicians can adopt routinely to inform patient care decisions."

O'Neill's appointment brings Vivid Dx experience spanning scientific research, diagnostics development, global healthcare innovation, and company building. He worked at MIT on the Human Genome Project, built a multi-institution point-of-care diagnostics program, supported early-stage life sciences companies through Enterprise Ireland, and built global innovation alliances at Abbott. Most recently, he served as CEO of Novus Diagnostics, where he advanced the development of a rapid point-of-care test for bloodstream infections.

Vivid Dx is now preparing to test its platform with patient-derived clinical samples, a key step toward showing that the technology can perform in the kinds of complex cases hospitals see every day. To date, the company has achieved proof-of-concept across core platform components, including direct-from-blood pathogen isolation, high-purity bacterial recovery, AI-powered Raman signal enhancement, and development of a proprietary spectral database containing thousands of clinical isolates. In preclinical testing, the platform demonstrated approximately 99% pathogen identification accuracy, and roughly 92% concordance for phenotypic AST testing compared with gold-standard methods.

"Vivid Dx has built strong technical proof across the core platform and is now advancing toward clinical validation," said Tony Besse, Principal, Health Tech at Oxford Science Enterprises. "The need for faster infectious disease testing is urgent, but speed alone is not enough—hospitals need results they can trust and integrate into care pathways. We look forward to supporting Vivid Dx as it takes the next step from technical proof toward the evidence needed for adoption at scale."

"Over the next decade, it's crucial that physicians globally adopt technologies that can help identify pathogens and guide therapy decisions faster and more precisely for drug-resistant infections," said Nirdesh Gupta, Managing Director, Cedars-Sinai Technology Ventures at Cedars-Sinai. "We see significant potential in Vivid Dx's approach combining blood-based testing and AI-driven analysis, and look forward to seeing the platform progress through clinical validation as it works to support faster, more informed infectious disease treatment decisions."

About Vivid Dx
Vivid Dx is a precision diagnostics company developing rapid infectious disease testing to help hospitals identify dangerous pathogens and guide faster antibiotic decisions. The company has developed a direct-from-blood platform designed to use Raman spectroscopy and AI to detect infections and support phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing, with the goal of reducing diagnostic timelines from days to hours. Vivid Dx's work is focused on improving treatment decisions for life-threatening infections such as sepsis while helping address the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance. Vivid Dx is backed by Oxford Science Enterprises, Cedars-Sinai, Jameel Investment Management Company, and additional strategic investors. Learn more at vivid-dx.com.

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SOURCE Vivid Dx