Testing startup earns $20M loan to invest in expansion

Gravity Diagnostics, the rapidly growing medical testing firm that processes thousands of COVID-19 tests a day, has received a capital infusion to enable more expansion.

PNC Bank has authorized a $20 million line of credit to the diagnostics laboratory to support investments in inventory, equipment, and operations to increase its capacity, the company says.

Gravity Diagnostics says it is expanding its market share in the multibillion-dollar laboratory industry through strategic relationships, a growing sales force, and and expansion of product offerings.

Based in Covington, the company is licensed in all 50 states providing laboratory testing for COVID-19, as well as for other medical diagnoses. In 2020, the laboratory increased its physical space by 900%, its employee headcount by 300%, and processed more than 1.5 million COVID-19 samples.

Gravity Diagnostics opened its laboratory in 2016. In 2020, it went from testing 20 COVID-19 samples a day to more than 20,000. It quickly shifted its business from its core of toxicology, pharmacogenetics, and infectious disease testing to COVID-19.

In April 2020, as COVID-19 was beginning to surge, Kentucky’s Department for Public Health announced an agreement with Gravity to provide testing services.

In late January 2021, Kentucky announced the discovery in Kenton County of the more contagious United Kingdom variant of the disease, a discovery that was aided by the work of Gravity Diagnostics and its discovery of a unique detection pattern in some specimens.

“We are providing more information to the experts who are tracking and coordinating efforts in the field, not just the baseline ‘positive and negative’ test results,” says Julie Brazil, chief operating officer at Gravity Diagnostics.