SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Add after last paragraph of release: About DBL Partners
The updated release reads:
R-ZERO RAISES $40M+ SERIES B TO ADVANCE THE EVOLUTION OF INTELLIGENT DISINFECTION PLATFORM
R-Zero’s Growth Accelerates as Businesses Recognize the Need for Enhanced Health Security Technologies Enabling Safer Indoor Environments
R-Zero, the first biosafety technology company dedicated to reducing the spread of infectious disease, today announced a $41.5 million Series B investment to accelerate the development and deployment of the world’s first continuous, automated disinfection ecosystem and quickly establishing the new standard for post-pandemic human health and safety in public spaces.
The round was led by World Innovation Lab (WiL) with participation from venture capital icon John Doerr and current R-Zero investors, DBL Partners and SOSV / HAX. This latest investment brings R-Zero’s total capital raised to over $58 million in the few short months since the company was founded in early 2020, further establishing the company as a world leader in delivering innovative biosafety technologies to address glaring gaps in society’s health protections against COVID-19 and other common infectious diseases.
“Disinfection - one of the few industries that’s been untouched by technology - has been long overdue for disruption,” said Rob Theis, General Partner at WiL, who has joined R-Zero’s Board of Directors as part of the round. “The rapid adoption of R-Zero’s UV-C technology demonstrates clear demand across the mass market and public sector for more effective, efficient, and sustainable methods of ensuring health security across indoor environments. The physical spaces of tomorrow will be protected by a network of connected smart devices, powered by data insights, and R-Zero is leading the way in the emerging intelligent disinfection market.”
R-Zero’s latest financing round comes when businesses are making critical decisions about how to reopen and stay open, navigating what workplace changes in the workplace need to be made to ensure employee safety. According to a recent Harris Poll survey of U.S. office workers, 91% of employees believe employers are responsible for ensuring employee health and safety in the workplace. This powerful expectation is paving the way for R-Zero’s innovation and technology that better addresses how organizations safeguard human health, now and into the future.
“As a society, we have failed at ensuring safety in the indoor spaces where we spend over 90% of our lives,” said Grant Morgan, co-founder and CEO of R-Zero. “Over the last century, we’ve seen the advent of the internet, autonomous vehicles, and we’ve sent humans to space. Yet today, we’re still disinfecting with the same harmful chemicals we used during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic to fight pathogens like SARS-CoV-2 in 2021. The future is about measuring and managing disinfection with the same level of sophistication and technology that is standard for other industries. We are proud to be the first to employ data science, advanced AI and ML techniques, modern software, and IoT technology to create and maintain healthier indoor environments. This latest investment enables us to accelerate our product innovation and help even more organizations prioritize and protect the health of the people they serve, and ultimately make sick days a relic of the past.”
R-Zero was founded in the early stages of the pandemic, upon recognizing an opportunity to revolutionize the antiquated, $20+ billion disinfection industry and establish a new standard for how organizations improve employee and patron safety by creating healthier indoor environments. R-Zero’s first product, an IoT-enabled whole room UV-C disinfection system currently protects thousands of schools, senior care facilities, commercial office spaces, professional sports facilities and event spaces, correctional facilities, health clinics, restaurants, gyms, and more to destroy pathogens in minutes - without the use of chemicals. R-Zero’s sustainable disinfection technology successfully reduces organizations’ disinfection carbon footprint by 93%, generates over 250x less waste and reduces risk by more than 15x compared to traditional chemical disinfection methods.
“This past year underscored the need to disrupt a legacy disinfection industry that is inefficient, unsustainable, dangerous, and manual. Instead, the future needs to focus on science-based approaches utilizing technology and innovation that give customers new ways to effectively, safely, and sustainably disinfect the places we all work, learn, and play,” said Ira Ehrenpreis, Managing Partner at DBL Partners and R-Zero board member. “In building this category-defining company, R-Zero embodies DBL’s double bottom line approach: the company democratizes access to a suite of best-in-class disinfection products that are not only better for people and the planet, but are also affordable, enabling customers to manage this critical part of their business in ways that were previously unimaginable.”
R-Zero’s unprecedented growth over the past year highlights a critical reality about the post-pandemic era: The public now possesses a powerful, new awareness of the impact indoor environments have on their overall health. Moving forward, there will be a premium on the health security of indoor spaces, and society will make decisions about where to work, learn, and where to spend their time and money based on how organizations are addressing human health and safety.
********
About R-Zero
R-Zero is the first biosafety technology company dedicated to making the indoor spaces we share, safer and clinically clean. Founded to help organizations protect the health of people they serve, R-Zero is dedicated to developing the most effective and innovative disinfection technologies, to reduce the spread of all infectious diseases. R-Zero’s first product, Arc [an IoT-enabled, whole-room UV disinfection device] is currently enabling a higher level of health safety for hundreds of thousands of people, across both public and private sector organizations, without the use of chemicals. Today, R-Zero is pioneering the first continuous, automated disinfection ecosystem, enabling every organization to measure and manage indoor health risk with the same level of sophistication and technology that’s become standard across virtually every other industry. Informed by data science, built with AI, ML, and IoT connected hardware, R-Zero’s intelligent disinfection platform provides greater visibility, automation and even smarter risk reduction within the indoor spaces where humans spend their time. R-Zero is backed by leading venture capital firms, as well as thought-leaders from the health, hospitality, sports, commercial real estate, impact, and other industries. For more information, visit www.rzero.com.
About World Innovation Lab (WiL)
World Innovation Lab (WiL) is a US & Japan-based VC with capital from governments and leading global corporations in Japan and throughout Asia, including Sony, Suzuki, NTT, KDDI, 7-Eleven & others. WiL’s mission is to bridge startups and corporates across key innovation hubs around the globe with the focus on driving growth - starting with Japan and the US.
WiL supports US startup expansion into Japan and Asia, and Japanese startup expansion worldwide. Working with our corporate investors as partners, we invest in digital transformation and sustainability. Recent direct company investments include R-Zero, Asana, Automation Anywhere, Auth0, DataRobot, MURAL, Sendbird, TransferWise, and Unqork. In addition to direct investment, we invest in exceptional venture funds - both established and emerging. For more information, visit wilab.com.
About DBL Partners
DBL Partners is one of the pioneering and largest impact investors in the venture asset class. The firm invests in companies that can deliver both top-tier venture capital returns and enable social, environmental, and economic benefits. DBL Partners manages over $1B in assets, and has made several high profile and successful investments, including Tesla, SolarCity, The RealReal, Pandora, Farmers Business Network, Planet, and SpaceX, among many others. More information can be found at: http://www.dbl.vc
