Vivid Dx secures $15 million investment and appoints new CEO

29 July 2026

Vivid Dx, based at The Oxford Science Park, has secured $15 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its rapid diagnostic technology for life-threatening infections, and has appointed Keith O'Neill as its new Chief Executive Officer.

The company is developing a platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and Raman spectroscopy to identify infection-causing pathogens directly from blood samples and determine which antibiotics are most likely to work. Its aim is to reduce testing times from days to hours, helping clinicians treat patients with serious infections more quickly while tackling the growing global challenge of antimicrobial resistance.

The funding will support the next stage of the company's development, including testing its platform using patient-derived clinical samples. In preclinical testing, the technology demonstrated approximately 99% pathogen identification accuracy and around 92% concordance for antimicrobial susceptibility testing compared with gold-standard methods.

As part of this next phase, Keith O'Neill has been appointed CEO, bringing international experience advancing healthcare innovation, most recently as CEO of Novus Diagnostics.

Keith O’Neill, incoming CEO of Vivid Dx, said: “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. 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."

The investment round was co-led by Oxford Science Enterprises and Cedars-Sinai Intellectual Property Co., with participation from Jameel Investment Management Company and additional strategic investors.

Tony Besse, Health Tech Principal at Oxford Science Enterprises, said: "Vivid Dx has built strong technical proof across the core platform and is now advancing toward clinical validation. 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."

Nirdesh Gupta, Managing Director, Cedars-Sinai Technology Ventures at Cedars-Sinai, said: "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. 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."

Read other news articles

News

Vivid Dx secures $15 million investment and appoints new CEO