Funding profile · Microbial genomics software

One Codex

A company with no Form D, no venture round on public record since 2014, and one exact, audited price: $83,391,000, paid by Invitae in February 2021 and written down to roughly nothing nineteen months later.

$83.4MInvitae purchase price, February 2021, per SEC filings
$19.8MLoss Invitae booked selling it back, Q3 2022
$150KFederal contract dollars obligated, all from DTRA in 2017
$0Disclosed capital raised since the 2022 employee buyout

Data as of September 22, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
2014 Y Combinator, Summer 2014 Not disclosed Y Combinator YC data
Jul 2014 Seed $120,000 total equity, per aggregators Y Combinator, Healthy Ventures Aggregator
2014 onward Venture investment Not disclosed DCVC, first investment 2014, later marked exited Investor site
Jan 2015 CDC challenge prize $200,000 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Trade press
Mar 2017 DTRA SBIR Phase I purchase order $149,871 Defense Threat Reduction Agency USAspending
Feb 2021 Acquisition by Invitae $83,391,000 Invitae Corp (NVTA) SEC 10-Q
Sep 2022 Sale back to the team Immaterial cash proceeds One Codex employees SEC 10-K

What the filings show

Invitae Corp · Form 10-Q, Q1 2021 · filed May 4, 2021

Target
Reference Genomics, Inc. d/b/a One Codex, 100 percent of the equity interest
Closed
February 2021
Upfront
$17.3 million cash and 1.4 million shares of Invitae common stock
Hold-back
About 0.2 million of those shares, in escrow for indemnification, released in full to the former stockholders in February 2022
Purchase price
Cash transferred $16,504,000 · hold-back stock $8,113,000 · common stock transferred $58,774,000 · total $83,391,000
Post-combination expense
$3,742,000, booked separately from the purchase price
Assets acquired
Cash $1,549,000 · receivables $684,000 · developed technology $23,841,000 · customer relationships $440,000 · goodwill $63,442,000
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001501134

Invitae Corp · Form 10-K, FY2022 · filed Feb 28, 2023

Event
Sale of the equity interest in One Codex and certain related assets, September 2022
Proceeds
An immaterial amount of cash, per the filing
Accounting
Treated as an asset sale, since substantially all of the fair value sat in developed technology and certain customer relationships
Carrying value sold
Developed technology $19.4 million · customer relationships $0.4 million
Result
Loss of approximately $19.8 million in the three months ended September 30, 2022, recorded in restructuring and other costs
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001501134

Reading the filings

  1. The goodwill was three quarters of the price.Of $83,391,000, only $19,949,000 was net identifiable assets. Goodwill was $63,442,000, or 76 percent. Invitae said it related primarily to expansion of the acquired technology into new areas of genetic testing. That expansion did not happen, and the goodwill went with the realignment.
  2. Most of the consideration was paper.Cash was $16,504,000, about 20 percent. The other $66,887,000 was Invitae common stock valued at the February 2021 price. What the sellers actually realized depended entirely on how fast they sold.
  3. The write-down is smaller than it looks.Invitae lost about $19.8 million on the sale, not $83.4 million. The intangibles had already amortized from $24.3 million of book value to $19.8 million, and the $63.4 million of goodwill went out in the general impairment rather than in this transaction. The economic loss is closer to the full purchase price.
  4. There is no Form D, and there probably never was one.SEC EDGAR full text search for “One Codex” returns 32 filings, every one of them by Invitae or by unrelated issuers. A company search for Form D under either name returns no matching companies. A YC seed of this size is typically done under Section 4(a)(2) or on a SAFE, which files nothing.
  5. The aggregators are not tracking this company.Tracxn shows $120,000 in one 2014 round, CB Insights shows $20,000, a 2014 Crunchbase snapshot shows $120,000 from Y Combinator and Healthy Ventures. Yet DCVC lists One Codex with a 2014 first investment and an Invitae exit, and Bio-IT World reported in 2015 that the team had raised a private round from undisclosed investors. The public totals are floors, not figures.
  6. Federal money was never the funding story.Two contracts exist: $149,871 from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in 2017 and a US Geological Survey purchase order in 2020 with zero obligated. NIH RePORTER returns no projects under either company name. The $200,000 CDC award in January 2015 was challenge prize money, not a contract, and it came with no follow-on award on record.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Ownership Independent since September 2022, via what Y Combinator describes as an employee buyout. Public record
Supply chain Lab services relationship with Invitae retained after the spin-out, so the sequencing workflow did not change. Company-stated
Partners ATCC since 2017, including the ATCC Genome Portal. Transnetyx since 2021. 4bases since 2023 for CE-IVD clinical use in the EU. Partner-stated
Scale More than 2 million analyses and thousands of users, per a 2023 partner release. No named end customer and no revenue figure has been published. Company-stated
Independent validation Evaluated in at least three peer reviewed benchmarks between 2020 and 2022, including a Mayo Clinic head to head against CosmosID and IDbyDNA. Peer reviewed
Headcount Aggregators put the company at 1 to 10 employees as of July 2024. Unverified

What to watch

  • A first Form D. Nothing has been filed under Reference Genomics, Inc. or One Codex, so any priced outside round should show up within 15 days of first sale.
  • New federal awards. The biosecurity thread from the 2017 DTRA order has never been picked back up on the public record.
  • Whether the 4bases CE-IVD path turns into a regulated revenue line in Europe.
  • Any disclosure of the buyout terms, which would settle what the team actually paid Invitae in 2022.

The One Codex story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • Lamar Health: Shared investor: Healthy Ventures. A San Francisco startup that builds AI software to automate the referral, benefits verification and prior authorization paperwork behind expensive specialty drugs
  • Clear Genetics: Shared investor: Company-Stated Partners. Three founders, one of them the CEO’s father, built a chatbot that walked patients through genetic testing
  • Cambridge Cancer Genomics: Shared investor: Company-Stated Partners. A Y Combinator backed British company that used repeat blood draws and machine learning to tell an oncologist when a cancer drug had stopped working
  • Macromoltek: Shared investor: Company-Stated Partners. An Austin software company that has designed antibodies inside a computer since 2011, paid for by federal grants and customer fees rather than venture rounds

Sources

  1. Public recordInvitae Corp Form 10-Q, Q1 2021, business combinations noteSEC · May 4, 2021
  2. Public recordInvitae Corp Form 10-K FY2022, disposition of One CodexSEC · Feb 28, 2023
  3. Public recordFederal awards HDTRA117P0016 and 140G0120P0339 to Reference Genomics, Inc.USAspending.gov · 2017 and 2020
  4. Public recordEDGAR full text and company searches for One Codex and Reference Genomics, no Form DSEC · Sep 23, 2026
  5. IndependentOne Codex and Microbiology’s Search ProblemBio-IT World, Aaron Krol · Feb 9, 2015
  6. IndependentStartup One Codex Building Platform to ID Pathogens from NGS DataGenomeWeb, Tony Fong · Feb 10, 2015
  7. IndependentOne Codex portfolio page, first investment 2014, exit marked InvitaeDCVC · accessed Sep 23, 2026
  8. AggregatorCompany and funding profiles for One CodexTracxn, CB Insights and a 2014 Crunchbase snapshot · accessed Sep 23, 2026
  9. CompanyA Bright Future for One CodexOne Codex blog, Christopher Smith · Oct 19, 2022
  10. CompanyOne Codex company and founder profile, YC Summer 2014Y Combinator · accessed Sep 23, 2026
  11. PartnerOne Codex and 4bases team up to empower clinicians in the EU4bases · Jul 20, 2023

Compiled from SEC, USAspending, NIH and USPTO public records and published reports as of September 22, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; no Form D has been filed by or for this company, and companies that raise under Section 4(a)(2) file none. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in One Codex. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.